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BOOKS BY CHARLES BELMONT DAVIS 

Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


HER OWN SORT AND OTHERS Illustrated. 

net $1.35 

THE LODGER OVERHEAD AND OTHERS 
Illustrated net 1.35 

THE STAGE DOOR Illustrated ... net 1.35 


HER OWN SORT 
AND OTHERS 













’V-** 





















Kimball had played many love scenes with Natalie. 

( Page 16 ) 



HER OWN SORT 
AND OTHERS 


BY 


CHARLES BELMONT 

DAVIS 

n 

ILLUSTRATED 

y 


NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1917 


(V^j. 




Copyright, 1917, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 



Published, March, 1917 



©CI.A457438 4 ' 



To 


JEANNE AND CONSTANCE TURGEON 




CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Her Own Sort ...... 1 

The Octopus ....... 38 

God’s Material ...... 108 

The Joy of Dying ...... 127 

When Johnny Came Marching Home . . 151 

The Professor . . . . . . .195 

The Twenty-First Reason . . . .218 

Side-Tracked . . . . . . .238 

The Men Who Would “Die” for Her . . 267 

Her Man ........ 305 


vii 


N 


HER OWN SORT 


All of their friends knew that it was only a ques- 
tion of the time and the place when Alan Godfrey 
would propose to Natalie Eyre. That he was going 
to propose was just as certain in their minds as 
it was that the good-looking, whimsical, poverty- 
stricken Natalie would accept so eligible a young 
man as Godfrey. They had been playing golf all 
afternoon and when the game was over Natalie sug- 
gested that, instead of stopping at the clubhouse, 
they return at once to Mrs. Goddard’s, where she 
was staying and where they could have a quiet, peace- 
ful chat over a cup of tea. Had it been her wish 
to hasten Godfrey’s declaration, she could not more 
wisely have chosen the setting for the sentimental 
event. It was a brilliant, golden afternoon in late 
August. The two young people sat across a wicker 
tea-table under a canopy at the far end of the ter- 
race. Below them stretched the calm blue waters 
of the ocean, and on the other side a wonderful lawn 
1 


HER OWN SORT 


studded with spreading oaks through whose branches 
the sunshine filtered and fell in orange splotches on 
the Nile-green turf. The stage was set, the hour 
was at hand, and therefore Godfrey, in a few brief 
sentences, but every word of which came straight 
from the heart, told Natalie of his great love for her. 
When he had finished, he started to rise and go to 
the girl’s side so that she might whisper the answer 
he had waited so long to hear, but, looking him stead- 
ily in the eyes, Natalie shook her head, and, with a 
slight gesture of her hand, motioned him away. 

For a moment the confused, un-understanding eyes 
of Godfrey held those of the girl, and then his big 
frame settled slowly back into the depths of the low 
chair in which he had been sitting. 

“Alan, dear,” she began, “it would be foolish of 
me to pretend that I didn’t know that you cared or 
that I had not expected that some day you would tell 
me so — just as you have told me. To be quite hon- 
est, it is about all that I have thought of for, oh, 
such a very long time. Because, you see, I knew 
that my answer would be the most important thing 
I would probably ever have to say in all my life. 
I love you, Alan, I am quite sure, more than I shall 
ever love any one — except, perhaps, myself.” 

2 


HER OWN SORT 


Hope flamed up in Godfrey’s eyes and once more 
he started to rise, but again Natalie motioned him 
back. “I love you,” she went on, “and I know that 
you would willingly grant me my every wish and 
every whim — that is, if you could.” 

Godfrey crossed his arms, pressed his lips into a 
straight line, and smiled grimly across the table. 

“So far as material things go, Natalie,” he said, 
“I can offer you a good deal. I know that there 
are other things that I cannot offer you. Do you 
mind telling me of which of these you were think- 
ing?” 

Natalie turned her eyes from Godfrey and, for a 
few moments, let them rest on the broad stretch of 
blue, sparkling waters, and then once more turned 
them back to the man. 

“Oh, so many things, Alan,” she said — “such a 
lot of things. You see, in a way, I lead two lives 
and you lead but one. From one of my lives I get 
the great happiness that comes from hard work and 
hard thinking — all I get from the other is physical 
luxury and plenty of healthy exercise. I’m tired of 
being a little daughter of the rich. Since my people 
died I have been really nothing but a well-bred, 
well-mannered grafter. I’m tired of luxury and I’m 
3 


HER OWN SORT 


tired of the crowd that makes luxury possible for 
me — I mean your crowd, Alan, and my crowd.” 

“Oh, I don’t know that it’s such a bad crowd,” 
Godfrey protested. 

“Of course, it isn’t a bad crowd,” the girl agreed 
cheerfully. “It’s only the society journals and the 
Sunday supplements that try to make our sort 
vicious. But you and I know that they’re not vicious 
— we know they’re just amateurs — amateur farmers 
and amateur business men and amateur lovers. I 
want to try my luck against professionals. You 
mustn’t forget, Alan, that I’ve had two novels 
published already.” 

“Yes, I know,” Godfrey laughed, “but to be quite 
fair, weren’t they published through Ned Powell and 
isn’t Powell the silent partner in the firm that pub- 
lished them?” 

Natalie’s delicate pink-and- white coloring suddenly 
turned scarlet. 

“Yes,” she threw at him, “that’s true enough, and 
it’s also true that with all Ned Powell’s influence back 
of them the books didn’t sell. But instead of remind- 
ing me of my failures, don’t you think it would be 
a trifle more kindly of you if you tried to hold out 
a little encouragement for the future? I think you 
4 


HER OWN SORT 


would if you knew how really and truly I was a little 
sister of the rich. No one knows just how much 
what is vulgarly called a successful marriage would 
mean to me now. Not even you know how little there 
is between me and starvation. Believe me, Alan, 
there are not many girls in my position who would 
throw you over just because they wanted to make 
good on their own. If you ” 

“Oh, that’s all right, Natalie,” Godfrey inter- 
rupted. “It’s not that I’m not appreciative, so much 
as it is that I’m selfish. You see, I want you all 
for myself in this world of amateurs. And as for 
you being near starvation, that’s just plain morbid. 
There are a whole lot of things between you and 
starvation — there’s me, for instance, and there’s 
Mrs. Goddard, and — and lots of good friends who 
would consider it a very great privilege to help you 
over the hard places.” 

Natalie shrugged her shoulders and brought the 
talk to a blunt and almost brutal end by rising from 
her chair and holding out her hand. 

“Thank you, Alan,” she said, “but it’s the hard 
places that make life worth the living — especially if 
one tries to get over them unaided. But don’t ever 
talk, to me again of marriage as you have just now. 

5 


HER OWN SORT 


You know you’re a good deal of a temptation, Alan. 
I’ll be leaving Newport in a few days, but of course 
I’ll see you before I go?” 

Godfrey was standing very close to the girl and 
holding her hand in both of his own. For the first 
time he seemed to realize that all of his hopes, all 
of the plans he had made for the future had come 
to naught and that in his great ambition he had 
failed miserably. 

“Why, yes, Natalie,” he stammered, “of course I’ll 
see you again — many times, I hope. But what are 
you going to do when you leave here, especially — I 
mean ” 

“You mean especially when I’m broke,” Natalie 
interrupted. “Why, Alan, I’m going back to town 
and try my luck against the real workers, and — loose 
myself from my old friends. The next time you see 
me, it may be behind a counter, or pounding the keys 
of a typewriter in the office of one of your broker 
friends, or singing and dancing in the chorus of a 
musical comedy. I don’t know. But I do know 
that for the present, at least, I’ve got to break away 
from my old life and — and you, Alan. I’m too weak 
to try any half-way course.” 

“I’m sorry,” Godfrey said gravely, and, raising 

6 


HER OWN SORT 


the girl’s hand, touched it with his lips. “Good-by, 
Natalie and good luck to you,” he added, and then, 
suddenly turning his broad shoulders toward the 
girl he loved, swung off across the sunlit lawn. 

During the six months that followed, Natalie Eyre 
did some of the things she had told Alan Godfrey 
that summer afternoon that she was going to do. 
And although during that period she was never 
starved, there were moments when she would have 
greatly relished better food and more of it. She 
did not try to be a stenographer, because she had 
not had the necessary training, but she did do some 
clerical work in a publishing house, as well as posing 
for several artists who made illustrations and covers 
for the magazines. Although with small practical 
success, she had continued her literary labors, and, 
on account of her fragile and flower-like beauty, had 
been given a very small part in the ballroom scene 
of a drama of modern society. It so happened that 
the play was a success, and therefore, night after 
night, in the front rows and in the boxes, Natalie 
recognized many of her former friends. To their 
frequent invitations to join them at supper she 
always replied that her work prevented her from 
going anywhere. 


7 


HER OWN SORT 

But, work and study as she might, she soon dis- 
covered that without personal or financial backing 
advancement on the stage came very slowly, and in 
her search for a better position she continued to 
haunt the offices of the managers and the theatrical 
agencies. It was a hard, sordid road that she had 
chosen to follow, but the art of acting interested 
her exceedingly, and, above all, she wished to prove 
to Alan Godfrey and the friends of her more affluent 
days that she was capable of earning her own live- 
lihood. This, at least, she did, but it was often at 
great privation to her physical well-being. After a 
short time, however, she became fairly callous to her 
material needs and her only annoyance was caused 
by the question that was constantly presenting itself 
to her mind as to whether or not her moral outlook 
on life had undergone any radical change. For a 
time after she had begun her career on the stage, 
she had maintained for her work and for the people 
who worked with her her former view-point, which 
was the larger one of the outsider. But of late she 
was conscious that there had been a subtle but ever 
constant change, and that more and more she now 
thought and talked in the terms of the theatre. Now 
she no longer read theatrical newspapers with the 
8 


HER OWN SORT 


single purpose of finding opportunities for bettering 
her position, but because the news and even the gossip 
of her fellow actors interested and amused her. By 
degrees their narrow world had become her world. 
The key to the door that led to the big outside world 
she still clutched tightly in her hand, but of late 
there had been moments when she felt that even this 
was slipping from her grasp. The men of her pro- 
fession with their pompous, unnatural manners, and 
the women with their petty jealousies and their 
ceaseless scandal, she gradually came to accept at 
their own inflated value. In considerably less than 
a year her transition to Broadway had become com- 
plete and its people had become her people. 

It was at a supper-party of theatrical folk in the 
early spring that she met the manager of one of 
the big moving-picture concerns. Attracted by 
Natalie’s beauty and the look of aristocratic breed- 
ing that showed in every feature of her face and 
every line of her slight, lithe body, he offered her a 
position in his regular stock company, and she 
accepted the offer. For a few weeks, twice a day, 
Natalie made the long, tedious trip between town and 
the studios of the Globe Film Company at Sheeps- 
head Bay, but at last the effort became too strenuous 
9 


HER OWN SORT 


and she moved her few belongings to Sheepshead 
village. Here, in comparative comfort, she settled 
in a big, airy room in Mrs. Cragin’s boarding-house, 
where all of the other guests were actors and actresses 
employed by the same company with which Natalie 
had cast her fortunes. Therefore, in her hours of 
ease as well as those of work she found herself con- 
stantly in the company of her fellow players. It 
was a small world complete in itself, and served to 
sever the last link that had connected her with her 
former life of luxurious ease. Now she worked from 
nine o’clock in the morning until late in the afternoon 
and often far into the night. But if her hours of 
work were long and arduous, they were rewarded 
with a prompt success. Her lovely features and the 
supple grace of her movements seemed peculiarly 
adapted to motion pictures, and in a brief space of 
time she was playing fairly important parts and her 
position with the company was assured. 

Among the actors who lived in Mrs. Cragin’s 
boarding-house with Natalie was Hugh Kimball, the 
leading man of the Globe Film Company. He was 
a good-looking young man in the early thirties, but 
in spite of his youth had spent many years in stock 
companies and was not unknown to the audiences 
10 


HER OWN SORT 

of Broadway. In the world of moving pictures he 
was already one of its best-known and most brilliant 
ornaments. His name had been persistently adver- 
tised throughout the broad land and his good-looking, 
clean-cut features were known to every girl and every 
woman in every town that boasted of a moving- 
picture theatre from Maine to Texas. By the small 
army employed by the Globe Company he was petted 
and spoiled and regarded as something a little better 
than other humans, and at the boarding-house which 
he honored with his presence he was easily the star 
guest. He enjoyed the luxury of an entire suite of 
rooms, and in his spacious parlor he frequently gave 
parties to the other boarders and to the many mov- 
ing-picture actors and actresses who lived in the 
neighborhood. Hugh Kimball was indeed a king 
among his fellows, and so often had he been assured 
of this fact that any early suspicion he may have 
had as to its truth had long since developed into a 
certainty. His pride and vanity showed in his eyes, 
in the way he carried his chin and shoulders, and 
whether he wore doublet and hose or evening clothes 
or a fur overcoat he always moved as if clad in the 
armor of a gallant knight. Until Natalie Eyre 
joined the forces of which he was the leading spirit, 
11 


HER OWN SORT 

he had politely but firmly refused the more or less 
flagrant advances of most of the ladies and had 
treated them all with chilling civility. But from the 
moment that he first saw Natalie Eyre he seemed to 
find something about her not possessed by the others, 
and it was but natural that the attention of Kimball 
should cause Natalie no small amount of satisfaction 
and pleasure. During the long spaces of time when 
they were waiting for their “scenes” at the studios, 
it flattered her to be seen so constantly in the com- 
pany of the great Kimball, the admired of all women. 
At the boarding-house he was equally attentive, and 
on warm spring evenings he frequently asked her to 
dine with him at one of the many restaurants or road- 
houses in the neighborhood. If on such occasions the 
good-looking actor talked a great deal of his suc- 
cesses on the stage and off of it, if he spoke with 
confidence of the triumphs that awaited him, it was 
at least a language with which during the past year 
Natalie had become entirely familiar. When, with 
a certain ring of awe in his voice, Kimball referred 
to his exalted position, Natalie was pleased to regard 
him from his own view-point, and whenever he left 
a restaurant without being recognized by the other 
12 


HER OWN SORT 


guests and complained in peevish tones at the over- 
sight, she was quite sincere in her sympathy. 

One Saturday afternoon, when Natalie happened 
to be free, she went to New York to do some shop- 
ping, and outside of a Broadway theatre saw the 
advertisement of a moving picture in which she had 
appeared. From pure curiosity, she entered the 
theatre and took a seat at the back of the darkened, 
half-filled auditorium. The film which she had come 
to see was already being shown on the screen and for 
some moments she sat smiling at a love scene between 
herself and Hugh Kimball. And then, she suddenly 
became conscious of the fact that the two girls sit- 
ting directly in front of her were talking about herself 
and the popular leading man. 

“They say he’s crazy about her,” one of the girls 
whispered. “It certainly looks like it when you see 
the way he grabs her in the picture, doesn’t it?” 

“It sure does,” the friend giggled audibly. “I 
wish I had her job.” 

“No chance,” sneered the first gossip. “I know 
a girl who has an aunt down at Sheepshead, and 
she says he never lets her out of his sight, day or 
night. They both live at the same boarding-house. 

18 


HER OWN SORT 


Pretty soft for Hughie, eh?” And at this witticism, 
both girls giggled long and loudly. 

Natalie felt that her face had suddenly turned 
scarlet, and she half rose, but, remembering that no 
one could see her in the darkness, she once more 
settled back in her seat. The resentment that she 
had at first felt toward the girl who had told the 
scandal vanished as quickly as it had come, and a 
few minutes later, the thought that Kimball’s de- 
votion to her was public property even brought a 
smile to her pretty lips. The sudden blush of shame 
was but an inheritance from her former self, and after 
all was but purely physical. She watched the film 
to the last picture, when Kimball and she were shown 
in a passionate embrace. Then, with the memory of 
the picture still filling her mind, she went out into 
the sunshine of Broadway. 

“Marloe’s Mummy” was the name of the play in 
which Natalie had, so far in her career, made her 
most ambitious effort. The plot of the comedy was 
the old one of the mummy who is bought in Egypt, 
shipped to America, and, by the transfusion of a 
magical elixir, eventually brought to life. Natalie 
played the mummy which in its former life had been 
a true princess royal of the Nile, and Hugh Kimball 
14 


HER OWN SORT 


was the millionnaire who had purchased her in her 
mummy clothes, and eventually, having married her, 
installed her as the chatelaine of his Fifth Avenue 
home as well as his summer palace at Newport. 
Throughout the long hot days of August Natalie, 
dressed in the filmy, diaphanous robes of the princess, 
and Kimball and the others, clad in modern clothes, 
had played the scenes that were supposed to take 
place in and about New York. The heavier part 
of the work was over and one day at Newport would 
be all that was necessary to complete the remaining 
scenes. Abe Feldman, the business manager, had 
gone on in advance, and on the last day of August 
he wired that he had secured permission to use the 
grounds of one of Newport’s finest estates and that 
the company and camera men should leave New York 
that same night by the Fall River boat. 

It was a brilliant moonlight night, and when they 
had finished their dinner Natalie and Kimball sought 
a secluded spot on the upper deck where undisturbed 
they could whisper their confidences and enjoy the 
glories of the perfect night. For a long time they 
sat in silence, while Kimball smoked innumerable 
cigarettes and Natalie looked out on the placid waters 
and the distant rim of shore bathed in the soft white 
15 


HER OWN SORT 


light of the silver moon. They were sitting very 
close together, shut off from the sight of prying eyes 
by a huge life-boat, and so, when Kimball put out 
his hand and laid it on Natalie’s and gently pressed 
it, the girl made no sign of resentment. During the 
past few months Kimball had played many love 
scenes with Natalie in which he had embraced and 
kissed her with all the outward signs of a true lover’s 
passion. But then they had been in the open sunlight, 
or in the studios under the blazing glare of hundreds 
of electric lights, with a camera clicking in their 
faces and a director shouting his orders to them 
through a megaphone. Now it was all quite differ- 
ent. The two young people were alone in the moon- 
light, and Hugh Kimball was just a man and Natalie 
Eyre a woman, and the touch of his hand thrilled 
her as no kiss of the stage had ever thrilled her. For 
a brief moment she turned her eyes to his, and in 
return he smiled a smile of happy, boyish content 
and once more pressed her soft, delicate hand. 

When he spoke, it was quite evident from the very 
first sentence that he had much to say and that his 
opening remarks would be only as a preamble to the 
matter of real import to which he was to refer later 
on. 

16 


I 


HER OWN SORT 


“In the first place,” he began, “I want to tell 
you something of my people. We came not far from 
the very town where we are going now — Newport. 
But of course we had nothing to do with the gay 
life of that resort of fashion. We were just simple 
Rhode Island farmer folk — honest but plain. My 
people still live on the farm where I was bom, and 
during my vacations I often go back to see the old 
folks and do my best to brighten up their declining 
years. You might think that I would prefer the 
gayer summer resorts where I would be well known 
and — and perhaps made much of and sought after.” 

From the depths of her low chair Natalie looked 
steadily at the cameo profile of the popular leading 
man, and her lips wavered into a whimsical little 
smile. What if he were vain, she argued, it was, 
after all, only the vanity of a spoiled child. There 
was so much to like and admire about Kimball, and 
she could never quite free her mind from the truly 
feminine thought that he was so greatly loved by 
so many women. The woman who married Hugh 
Kimball and who could hold his love would indeed 
be one to be envied. As far back as she could re- 
member, Natalie had always rejoiced in doing the 
thing that was least expected of her. To refuse Alan 
17 


HER OWN SORT 


Godfrey and his millions had caused her a certain 
satisfaction if only because it had astonished her 
friends, and to marry a moving-picture actor she 
knew would cause them even greater astonishment, 
and she smiled pleasantly at the prospect. And then, 
she became conscious that Kimball was still telling 
her of his early struggles, and the thought occurred 
to her that when Hugh talked about himself it was 
always in the manner of a toast-master at a banquet 
enumerating the virtues of the distinguished guest 
of the evening. But Natalie had come to love the 
very naivete of the man, and long since she had 
convinced herself that beneath his braggadocio there 
were concealed the heart and soul of a real man and 
a true lover. 

“As to your family,” she heard him saying — “as 
to your past, I know nothing and I ask to know 
nothing. I am satisfied to take you as you are. To 
me the day of your birth will always be the day I 
first saw you. All I ask of you, Natalie, is your 
love and your life.” 

She felt his strong arm about her drawing her 
slight body closely to him. Unresisting her lips met 
his, and, as he gently released her, she heard him 
whisper: “That is your promise, Natalie?” 

18 


HER OWN SORT 


“Why, yes, Hugh,” she said; “of course, that is 
my promise.” 

Abe Feldman was waiting for the company at the 
Newport pier, and although it was extremely early 
in the morning his enthusiasm over the success of his 
own efforts was very great. When they were all 
crowded into a large ’bus and were on the way to 
the hotel, he told them that he had not only secured 
the use of the lawns and gardens of one of the very 
finest places on the Ocean Drive, but that the gra- 
cious lady owner, who happened to be giving a large 
luncheon party that afternoon, had promised to use 
her best efforts to induce her guests to appear as 
supers in the pictures. 

“It’s a great ad for the Globe Company,” he said, 
beaming on the actors, “and a great chance for you 
all to break into swell society. We’ll get a close 
slant at them, anyhow, and see what they’re like on 
their own feeding-grounds.” 

Of all of this Natalie heard but little. Through 
the windows of the barge she was looking out on 
the narrow, sunlit streets and the landmarks which 
had once been so familiar to her. Of the hotel where 
Feldman had said they were to stay, she had never 
19 


HER OWN SORT 


even heard the name. She was entering a village 
which a year before had been as her own home, but 
now she came by a new road and as a stranger, and, 
in the new order of things, she knew that after a 
brief glimpse of its glories as a stranger she would 
leave it. For the first time in many months, she 
realized how completely she had submerged herself 
in her new life and how thoroughly she had shut her- 
self off from her old friends and the world in which 
they moved. Her world was now the studios of the 
film company that employed her and Mrs. Cragin’s 
boarding-house at Sheepshead Bay. Her friends 
were now the tired, travel-worn, perspiring men and 
women who crowded the omnibus and who with but 
a mild show of interest were listening to Abe Feld- 
man tell of his experiences with what he was pleased 
to designate the “nobs of Newport.” 

To Natalie the words of the excited Feldman at 
last took form, and, but half understanding, she 
smiled at the fat, shining face of the manager and 
asked : 

“Who is it that owns these wonderful grounds 
where we are to play ?” 

“Mrs. Alexander Goddard’s her name,” the mana- 
ger said, “and believe me, she’s some swell — one of the 
20 


HER OWN SORT 


kind you read about in the papers. You know, the 
sort that has grand op’ry stars after dinner to sing 
swell ballads at a thousand a throw, and invites live 
monkeys in to lunch to entertain her guests.” 

Hugh Kimball majestically folded his arms and 
sniffed audibly. 

“And being out of monkeys just now,” he hurled 
at the well-meaning Feldman, “I suppose she’s willing 
to let us act out on her lawn to amuse her friends. 
I wonder if they’ll feed us peanuts?” 

Huddled in the corner of the rumbling omnibus, 
Natalie, her face flushed, her hands clasped tightly 
before her in her lap, with wide-open, unseeing eyes 
stared straight before her. For some reason it had 
never occurred to her that, so long as she purposely 
kept out of their way, that there was the most remote 
chance of being brought into immediate contact with, 
or even of seeing, any of her former friends. She 
had come to Newport as a moving-picture actress 
just as she had gone to many other towns where 
she knew no one and was herself unknown. But now 
it seemed that the stage chosen for her work was to 
be the home of a very old and a very dear friend, 
where, almost as a daughter of the house, she had 
lived for many months at a time. And if what Feld- 
21 


HER OWN SORT 


man had said was true, she would not only meet Mrs. 
Goddard again but Mrs. Goddard’s friends, who 
would be sure to be her friends, too. Her unhappy, 
distressed mind was suddenly filled with a picture of 
herself in the bespangled, transparent robes of the 
Princess of the Nile wandering about and being made 
to perform foolish antics on the sunlit lawn. With 
a slight shudder, the girl instinctively raised her 
hands and pressed them against her eyes as if to 
shut out the miserable scene. During the long morn- 
ing hours that followed, shut up in her room at the 
hotel, her confused brain conjured up many schemes 
whereby this impossible situation might be averted. 
If she refused to act, she would have to resign or 
be discharged from the company which had always 
treated her with consideration and with whom she 
had won an assured and profitable position. And, 
in addition to this, her promise to Kimball of the 
night previous made it almost imperative that she 
continue her present work. To falter now would be 
to turn her back on the road she had voluntarily 
chosen to follow. It would not be playing the game, 
and it had long been one of Natalie’s boasts that she 
always played the game. 

When Abe Feldman and his company arrived at 

22 


HER OWN SORT 

their destination, Mrs. Goddard and her guests were 
still at luncheon, and therefore, while the manager 
and his camera men arranged the preliminaries, the 
actors and actresses gathered in groups on the broad 
porches of the house. Somewhat surprised but 
promptly acceding to Natalie’s request, Kimball had 
left her to join the others, and when she was alone 
she dropped into a low wicker chair and, for some 
time, looked out on the velvety lawn, and now and 
again cast furtive glances at her fellow players. 
Their faces were made up, but they wore modern 
clothes, as the play demanded they should. Natalie 
had seen these same clothes many times before at the 
studios and there they had seemed appropriate 
enough, but now on Mrs. Goddard’s porch they ap- 
peared wholly out of place and rather absurd. In 
the brilliant sunshine the dresses of the women looked 
cheap and tawdry and the men’s clothes frayed, 
baggy at the knees and shiny at the elbows. Even 
the tweed morning suit that Hugh Kimball wore, 
with its padded shoulders and narrow waist, appealed 
to Natalie’s now sceptical sight as looking rather 
like an advertisement for men’s ready-made clothing. 
The heavily beaded eyelashes of the women and the 
rouge on their cheeks, and the smooth pink-and-white 
23 


HER OWN SORT 


make-ups of the men, made them all look rather in- 
human and almost uncanny in the broad light of day. 
Of all the company Natalie was the only one who 
appeared in costume, and, with a slight shiver of dis- 
may, she pulled the long coat she wore more tightly 
about her filmy draperies. And then, from the house 
she heard a confusion of sounds of talking and 
laughter, and she saw Mrs. Goddard, followed by her 
guests, come out on the porch. In a moment Natalie 
was on her feet and moving swiftly toward her former 
friend. With a little cry of surprise the elder woman 
held out her arms and fairly smothered Natalie in 
her embrace. 

“My dear child,” she cried, “what are you doing 
here with your pretty face all made up, and what 
have you got under that heavy coat this broiling 
day? What do you mean by not letting me know 
you were in town, and why didn’t you come in to 
lunch?” 

“I couldn’t,” Natalie laughed. “I’m a working- 
girl now — a queen of the movies.” All she said after 
this was lost in a chorus of noisy exclamations, and 
she found herself in the centre of a circle of Mrs. 
Goddard’s excited, eager guests and violently shak- 
ing hands with Alan Godfrey. After Godfrey had 
24 


HER OWN SORT 


been induced by the others to give up Natalie’s hands, 
she became the recipient of a greeting the warmth of 
which fell little short of an ovation. Old ladies em- 
braced her tenderly, young girls of her own age 
kissed her enthusiastically on both of her rouged 
cheeks, and men, young and old, wrung her soft, 
pretty hands until they fairly ached. Perhaps it was 
on account of her aching hands or perhaps it was 
from some other cause, but when the excitement of 
the first greetings was over there were tears in Nat- 
alie’s eyes, tears that could not be restrained; and 
therefore she put her arms about Mrs. Goddard and 
laid her head on the ample bosom of her old friend 
and in a low, husky voice whispered: “I never knew 
you all cared so much. Why didn’t somebody tell 
me?” 

Mrs. Goddard smoothed the soft hair of the head 
lying on her breast and said: “Because, you little 
fool, you mould be a working-girl and you refused 
to give any of us the chance to tell you anything. 
Now that we’ve found you again, I hope you’ll be 
good.” 

When Natalie raised her head and, looking about 
her, smiled, through her glistening eyes she caught 
sight of the moon face and the rotund figure of Abe 
25 


HER OWN SORT 


Feldman, who by slow and easy stages had ap- 
proached within a few feet of the charmed circle. 

“Oh, Mrs. Goddard,” Natalie said, “I want to 
present Mr. Feldman to you. Mr. Feldman is our 
manager.” 

The little man doubled up in a bow so low that 
his shining, perspiring, bald head almost touched his 
massive watch-chain. In turn he was presented by 
Mrs. Goddard to her guests, who with great enthu- 
siasm accepted his invitation to join his company 
and, for a few brief hours, to perform the work of 
“extra” people in the moving-picture drama of 
“Marloe’s Mummy.” 

Throughout the long, hot afternoon the cameras 
continued to click off thousands of feet of films that 
were destined to make Natalie Eyre and Hugh Kim- 
ball famous and Mrs. Goddard and Mrs. Goddard’s 
friends, if not famous, at least better known through- 
out the broad land. The embarrassment which Nata- 
lie had at first felt in the situation was quickly for- 
gotten in her work, and in the enthusiasm with which 
her old friends entered into the execution of what 
appealed to them as a novel’ and amusing experience. 

The day’s work was nearly over and the oak-trees 
were casting giant shadows on the lawn, when the 
26 



Throughout the long, hot afternoon the cameras continued 
to click off thousands of feet of films. 














HER OWN SORT 


unhappy incident occurred. Natalie and Kimball 
had the green bit of lawn which served as the stage 
to themselves and were in the middle of a very serious 
and passionate love scene when something went wrong 
with the camera. The scene came to an abrupt end, 
and Natalie turned to speak to her friends who were 
standing in a group at the side of the sylvan stage. 
Caught unaware, she saw by their faces and their 
manner that, instead of being seriously interested, 
they were laughing at and quietly guying the heroic 
efforts of Kimball to make love as love is supposed 
to be made by an American gentleman and a New- 
port millionnaire. Confused and blushing scarlet 
under her rouge, Natalie cast a hurried glance at 
Kimball, and seeing him still staring at the broken 
camera, found some consolation in the thought that 
he too had not seen the smiles of ridicule on the faces 
of her old friend’s guests. 

A little later on, when the last scene had been taken 
and the film of “Marloe’s Mummy” was an accom- 
plished fact, Abe Feldman and his company of players 
gladly accepted Mrs. Goddard’s invitation to stay 
for tea with her. While the tired but contented 
actors gathered about the pretty tables on the 
porches, Hugh Kimball saw a young man speak to 
27 


HER OWN SORT 


Natalie and then from the comer of his eye watched 
them stroll slowly across the lawn in the direction of 
the terrace that overlooked the sea. 

When Natalie and Alan Godfrey had reached the 
terrace, they sat down in the same two wicker chairs 
which they had occupied on a very momentous 
occasion just about one year before. 

“Same two old chairs, same girl,” Godfrey said, 
and laughed a rather mirthless sort of laugh. 

Natalie drew her coat tightly over the spangled 
bloomers of the Princess of the Nile, and her rouged, 
scarlet lips wavered into a brilliant, dazzling smile. 
Whatever may have been in the girl’s heart, it was 
her great wish to have this talk with Godfrey as 
cheerful as possible. 

“Same chairs,” she laughed, “but not quite the 
same girl.” 

“But you’ve succeeded, haven’t you?” Godfrey 
asked. 

Natalie nodded. “Yes, I suppose so. I make my 
own living and a pretty good living at that. But 
I’m sorry I came back here to-day.” 

“Why?” 

“Oh, I don’t know, except it was rather like the 
return of the prodigal daughter. The fatted calf 
28 


HER OWN SORT 


sort of choked me and made me cry. And, then, of 
course, everything about the place reminds me of 
a lot of things I haven’t got any more and, until 
to-day, that I hadn’t really missed.” 

“True friends, perhaps?” Godfrey suggested. 

But Natalie refused to be serious. 

“No,” she said; “the true-friends idea didn’t 
appeal to me so much as a great longing I had for 
a plunge into the surf at Bailey’s Beach. And then, 
all of the time I was acting out there on the lawn my 
mind was really on the golf-links. I was thinking 
what fun it would be to* be standing on a nice flat 
tee with a little white ball at my feet and a good 
whippy driver in my hands and the fail' green stretch- 
ing out before me. And then a sweet stroke, a swish, 
and the ball flying straight and true and leaping 
in great bounds over the smooth turf, missing the 
traps and skimming the bunkers and — Oh ! I don’t 
know, but it was a rather pleasant dream.” 

“You’re not much in the open?” 

Natalie shook her head. “No, not very much. 
Sometimes we work out-of-doors but most of our 
scenes are in the studios, and believe me, the heat of 
the lights is awful. What have you been doing, Alan, 
all this long year?” 


29 


HER OWN SORT 


With a sudden look of surprise Godfrey stared 
steadily at Natalie until the girl’s eyes, tired after 
her long afternoon’s work, faltered and turned 
toward the open sea. 

“Why, you know, Natalie, dear,*’ he said. “Of 
course you must know that I have been doing just 
what I did the year before and the year before that, 
and ever since I have known you. There is only one 
real thing in my life — and I suppose always will be 
— my love for you. Even if you wouldn’t let me see 
you all of this time and hid yourself from me, I 
knew that you knew that I was waiting. Surely you 
understood, Natalie?” 

The girl glanced up at Godfrey and then toward 
the sea and then back to Godfrey’s searching eyes. 

“Why, yes, Alan,” she said, “in a way I under- 
stood. But, you see, I have been working so hard, 
and in my work I found other interests and — and 
other friends.” 

Natalie’s hand was lying on the arm of her chair 
and Godfrey suddenly put out his own hand and 
took that of the girl in a firm grasp. 

“You mean that there is some one else?” he asked. 

Through misty eyes Natalie looked into the fright- 
ened eyes of Godfrey. 


30 


HER OWN SORT 


“Yes, Alan,” she whispered, “there is some one 
else.” 

She drew the lapels of her coat more closely over 
her breast, and then, after a few moments of silence, 
wearily pulled herself to her feet. 

“It’s getting rather cold,” she said, “and I’m afraid 
the others will be going back to the hotel. You know 
we return to New York to-night by the boat. Be a 
good boy, Alan, and take me back to the house with 
you now, won’t you?” 

After Natalie had returned to the hotel she went 
to her room, so that she might be alone until supper- 
time, when it would be necessary for her to meet 
Kimball and the others. The events of the day had 
upset her greatly and she was tired and nervous and 
on the verge of breaking down and crying. Try as 
she might, she could not forget the look in Alan 
Godfrey’s eyes, and she could not forget the scene 
when the camera had broken down and she had caught 
the crowd laughing at and silently guying Hugh 
Kimball, the king of the moving-picture world and 
the man she had promised to marry. For some time 
she lay on the bed in the little hotel room staring 
wide-eyed at the whitewashed walls; and then some 
31 


HER OWN SORT 


one knocked and, going to the door, she found Kim- 
ball waiting to be admitted. 

“Just a few words,” he said, and, without waiting 
for Natalie’s consent, came into the room and closed 
the door behind him. 

Natalie offered him a chair, but Kimball refused, 
and, going over to the fireplace, took his stand before 
the empty grate and slowly clasped his hands behind 
his back. 

“I have been taking a walk,” he began, “and — and 
thinking. It occurred to me that unless there should 
have to be some re-takes ‘Marloe’s Mummy’ is fin- 
ished — that is, so far as you and I are concerned. 
And then it struck me how much better it would be 
for you, and for me, too, if you did not return to 
New York to-night but remained on here with your 
friends.” 

Natalie was sitting on the edge of the bed, her 
elbows resting on her knees, her chin cupped in her 
palms, and her eyes fixed steadily on Kimball. 

“I don’t think I understand you, Hugh,” she said. 
“Why shouldn’t I go back with you? Have you 
forgotten that we were to have another long evening 
together on the boat in the same little hiding-place 
that we discovered last night?” 

32 


HER OWN SORT 


“No, Natalie,” he said, “I hadn’t forgotten that.” 
For a few moments he hesitated, and during this 
brief interval of silence Natalie noticed the curious 
change that had taken place in the man’s manner 
and in the way he carried himself. There was no 
longer the strut or the old air of braggadocio about 
him, and in all ways he seemed so much more simple 
and human. 

“Last night,” he went on, “I said that I wanted 
to marry you just because you were you and I said 
that I didn’t care to know anything of your past. 
Of course, that was very foolish of me, but I didn’t 
know how foolish it was until I learned something of 
your past to-day. I envy you such — such pleasant 
and prosperous friends.” 

“What difference does it make,” Natalie asked, 
“who my friends happen to be, so long as we care for 
each other?” 

Kimball shook his head and forced a mirthless 
smile to his parched lips. 

“It will seem very strange,” he said, “to go back 
to Sheepshead Bay and to Mrs. Cragin’s without 
you. I don’t think I ever told you that just before 
you came to live there that I was going to move 
away. Well, I was. I hated the place then. But 
83 


HER OWN SORT 


after you came everything was quite different. In 
what to me before had been a God-forsaken, cast-off 
racing-town I found a quaint, deserted village. I 
forgot the forlorn cottages and the neglected gardens 
and saw only the flowers that still pushed their way 
through the weeds. Pleasant evenings those, Natalie, 
when we walked down by the sea and had our little 
dinners together at the corner table at Kettler’s. 
Do you ” 

“Hugh, dear,” Natalie interrupted him, “I don’t 
understand you at all. Why should you talk like 
this — as if everything was over between us?” 

Staring at the wall before him, apparently uncon- 
scious of Natalie’s presence, Kimball, in the same 
even voice, went on to say what he had so evidently 
come to say. 

“There was a young man there to-day — the young 
man with whom you took a walk and with whom you 
remained some time on the terrace. From a remark 
I happened to overhear, the young man had evidently 
been an old flame of yours. Why, even I, a stranger, 
could see in his eyes how he loved you, and in your 
eyes how you loved him. But even if I were mis- 
taken” — For a moment the actor stopped, and 
slowly moistened his dry lips with his tongue. “Even 
34 


HER OWN SORT 


if you and this young man do not love each other 
as I’m sure you do,” he went on, “there was some- 
thing else that happened — something that pointed 
out to me the barrier that would always rise between 
us two and happiness.” 

Natalie started to rise and go to Kimball, but 
with a quick, nervous movement he motioned her 
back. 

“It happened when the camera went wrong. I 
suddenly glanced about at your friends and I saw 
that they were laughing at me — I suppose at my 
pompous ways and my exaggerated clothes. It 
wasn’t necessary for them to laugh to make me un- 
derstand the difference. God knows, I’d seen it all 
through the afternoon.” 

“Don’t you think, Hugh,” Natalie said, “that per- 
haps you are wrong — just a little tired from over- 
work, and — and morbid?” 

“Don’t think that I blame them,” Kimball went 
on. “I’ve often wondered why we actors are as we 
are. I’ve sometimes thought it must be the foot- 
lights. They flare up between us and the audience 
and to look like human beings we’ve got to paint 
our faces, and to act like real people we’ve got to 
exaggerate our manners and grimace and gesticulate 
35 


HER OWN SORT 


like monkeys. And then in time we come to exag- 
gerate off the stage and pose and assume a grand 
manner and wear loud clothes. We’re no worse nor 
better than your friends I met to-day — the only dif- 
ference is that we always have our make-ups on.” 
He crossed the room to where Natalie sat, and held 
out both his hands. “And now it’s good-by, my 
dear. You’d better let me tell Feldman that you’re 
not returning with us. I can fix it more easily than 
you.” 

For a few silent moments Natalie held the out- 
stretched hands tightly in both her own. 

“Thank you,” she said at last, “and good luck to 
you, Hugh, and God bless you always. Tell them 
at Mrs. Cragin’s that I’ll be there pretty soon to see 
them all and to get my things. And I’ll see you 
there too, won’t I, Hugh?” 

Kimball dropped the girl’s hands and, as if afraid 
to meet her eyes, stared steadily at the blank wall 
beyond. 

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “You see, I’ll be leav- 
ing Sheepshead very soon. The place will be so full 
of ghosts and — ” Again he hesitated, and then went 
on in the same even voice. “But you’ll be sure to be 
36 


HER OWN SORT 


dropping in at the moving-picture shows sometimes, 
won’t you, whatever you happen to do?” 

“Why, of course, Hugh,” Natalie said, “lots of 
times. I’ll never forget my love for the movies. Why 
do you ask that?” 

The question seemed to embarrass Kimball, and, 
for the first time since she had known him, he had 
difficulty in finding the words with which to express 
himself. 

“I was thinking,” he said at last, “that if you 
should ever see me on the screen, as you’re pretty 
sure to do, give me a nod, and for old times’ sake 
whisper what you said to me just now. ‘Good luck 
to you, Hugh, and God bless you always,’ I’ll be 
sure to hear you.” 

And then, with a brave attempt at his former 
princely manner, the hero of the moving-picture 
world made a grave and courteous bow and, squaring 
his broad, padded shoulders, strode from the room. 


* 


37 


THE OCTOPUS 


ARCHIE SHELDON found his mother waiting 
for him in the sitting-room — just as he had found 
her waiting for him every afternoon since he had 
started to work as a clerk in the railroad offices four 
years before. It was the end of a hot day in early 
June, but after the warm air of the baked streets 
the darkened little sitting-room sepmed very cool 
and fresh, and about the old chintz- covered furniture 
there was a distinct scent of lavender. As her son 
called to her from the hallway, Mrs. Sheldon rose 
quickly from her rocking-chair by the window and 
held out her arms to him. She put her soft white 
hands on his cheeks, and raising herself to her full 
height kissed him on his damp forehead. Even in the 
dim twilight she could see that he looked very tired 
and worried, 

“What is it, Archie?” she asked. “Please tell your 
mother, won’t you?” 

Sheldon put his arms about her and looked down 
at the smooth, pretty face and the wavy bronze hair. 
38 


THE OCTOPUS 


Only those who knew at what an absurdly young age 
Mrs. Sheldon had married could believe that she 
was the mother of a son of twenty-five. 

“Sit down, won’t you?” he said. “I think I will 
tell you. I’ve wanted to have a serious talk with 
you for a long, long time.” 

Mrs. Sheldon returned to the rocking-chair, and 
Archie drew up a foot-stool and sat at her feet. 

“A party of the boys and girls in town,” he began, 
“are going up to the mountains the last part of 
this month to camp out for a couple of weeks. The 
Slades are going along to chaperon them, and it just 
so happens that all of the crowd are friends of mine 
— that is, if I have any real friends. Well, I wasn’t 
asked to go along, that’s all.” 

Mrs. Sheldon looked out through the open window 
upon the gray shadows of the broad, elm-lined street, 
and then about the little room as if somewhere in 
the darkened corners or in the recesses of the heavy 
mahogany furniture she would find some adequate 
answer. “I’m sorry, so very sorry,” was the only 
answer that she could find, and then she added; “It 
would have been a wonderful way to spend your 
vacation, wouldn’t it? If I could ” 

“It isn’t exactly that, mother,” Sheldon inter- 

39 


THE OCTOPUS 


rupted; “it’s not just a question of my vacation. 
It’s much more serious than that. After living in 
Dunham for over twenty years I have made no place 
here for myself. When I was a kid they called me 
‘mamma’s boy,’ and they’ve called me the same thing 
in one way or another ever since. I don’t want to 
hurt you, because you know and I know that you’re 
the best mother in the world, and I know how you’ve 
toiled and slaved for me all my life, but I’ve got to 
get away. I’ve got to fight it out for myself — alone. 
I’m going away from Dunham, mother, and when I 
come back I’ll be a man, a real man. Don’t you, 
won’t you understand, dear?” Sheldon rose and 
slowly paced up and down the little room, looking 
straight ahead and with his hands clasped behind 
his back. For a few moments neither of them spoke, 
and then it was the low, even voice of the mother 
that broke the silence. 

“Have you thought at all, Archie,” she asked, 
“where you will go?” 

Sheldon nodded. “I’ve thought of it a great deal, 
but it’s very hard to decide just where I can go. I’d 
like to try New York — the game would be bigger 
there and the chances ought to be better, but I don’t 
know where or how I could get a start. It seems 
40 


THE OCTOPUS 


strange that we don’t know any one who would be 
willing to give me a chance. Most of the boys I 
know have some rich relatives or old family friends 
that can do something for them. Isn’t there any 
one, mother?” 

For a moment Mrs. Sheldon hesitated, and when 
she spoke it was with much apparent effort. “There 
is one old friend who lives in New York, and I 
imagine that he is very rich. I knew him after your 
father’s death, when I was living in New York. It 
— it was before you were born, and I was very poor. 
Then we came to Dunham, and after that I heard 
he had been very successful. I haven’t seen or 
heard from him for a long, long time now, but 
years ago he offered to do anything that he could 
for me.” 

The manner of the young man suddenly changed, 
and he sat forward on his chair and looked his 
mother eagerly in the eyes. “And you’ve never asked 
anything of him?” 

Mrs. Sheldon shook her head. “No, Archie,” she 
said, “never, and I don’t suppose that I ever should, 
unless you wanted me to very much. I’ve always 
liked to be independent, and I was never much at 
asking favors even of old friends. But if this means 
41 


THE OCTOPUS 


such a great deal to you, and if it is your only 
chance, I will ask this man to make good his 
promise.” 

It was the private secretary of Thatcher Thole 
who led Archie Sheldon through the outer offices of 
the well-known financier and promoter. In a vague 
way Sheldon wondered at the extravagance of the 
big sunlit rooms and at the great number of smartly 
dressed young men busy at their desks and the many 
women stenographers pounding away at their type- 
writing machines. Thole’s own room was the small- 
est of all and, save for the broad mahogany desk 
and a few chairs, was quite bare. “This is Mr. 
Sheldon,” the secretary said, and went out, closing 
the door softly behind him. Thoroughly conscious 
of the importance of this first interview, Archie stood 
nervously twisting his hat between his hands and 
staring at the tall figure of the financier silhouetted 
against the brilliant sunlight of the open window. 

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Sheldon,” Thole said, and 
leaving the recess of the window motioned Archie to 
a chair across the desk from his own. Sheldon sat 
down and glanced shyly at the man in whose hands 
his future lay. He saw the gaunt figure of a man 
42 


THE OCTOPUS 


in the early fifties, a smooth-shaven face, a strong 
chin and a bulging forehead, thin black hair, heavily 
streaked with white, and a hard straight mouth. The 
whole impression that he got in that first glance was 
one of unlimited determination and force, but neither 
in the steady gray eyes nor in the mouth was there 
any show of kindliness whatever. 

“I understand from a letter your mother wrote 
me,” Thole began, “that you have had several years’ 
experience in bookkeeping and general office work. 
As you probably know, that sort of thing leads to 
no more in New York than it does in your own town 
of Dunham. A good bookkeeper has no more 
opportunity or right to show his personality than 
a machine for making tacks has, and personality, 
I believe, is the biggest factor in a man’s success in 
business. If it turns out that you haven’t got the 
personality or the push that means success, then 
you can still go back to keeping books. In the mean- 
time I’m going to turn you over to Slade, my sec- 
retary, and in helping him you will learn to make 
yourself useful to me and the various concerns in 
which I am interested. You will, in time — probably 
a very short time — learn a good many things of a 
confidential nature. Your value to me will depend 
43 


THE OCTOPUS 


very largely on your ability not to speak of these 
things, drunk or sober, not even to the one girl whom 
you are ass enough to believe deserves your entire 
confidence.” 

Sheldon blushed scarlet. “I don’t drink, Mr. 
Thole,” he protested, “and I have never cared much 
about girls.” 

The financier took a box of cigars from a drawer 
of his desk and pushed it toward Sheldon, but the 
latter shook his head. 

“I never smoke,” he said. 

Thole lighted a cigar, stuck his hands deep into 
his trousers pockets, stretched his long legs before 
him, and under arched eyebrows stared steadily at 
the young man across the desk. “Viceless, eh? Well, 
I don’t say you’re wrong, and whatever else they 
may say about me I don’t know that I was ever 
accused of putting temptation in the way of young 
men. But you will find out before long that the 
liquor in New York is better than the liquor at 
Dunham, that there is more of it, and that you will 
have greater opportunities and temptations to drink 
it. You will also find that the women of this town 
are often good looking, wear fine clothes, and fre- 
quently make inducements for young men to tell all 
44 


THE OCTOPUS 

they know — inducements which are extremely at- 
tractive and entirely unknown in country towns. As 
for smoking, it is a nerve tonic which I find harmless 
and often wonderfully beneficial. I smoke and I 
drink — that is, in moderation ; and purely as recrea- 
tion from mental worries I like women — women of 
all kinds. On the other hand, I know one of the 
biggest operators in New York who finds his recrea- 
tion after a hard day’s fight with the market in 
solitaire — ‘Idiot’s Delight’ is his especial game. I 
know another man. He’s a director in several of 
my companies, and his particular insanity is to take 
a lot of iron clubs and knock a harmless rubber ball 
into a series of tin cups stuck in the ground. There 
is another big operator down-town who is crazy 
over unset gems. My particular ‘Idiot’s Delight’ is 
women. I might as well tell you that now, because 
everybody else will tell you sooner or later, and they 
might tell it to you a little stronger than I do. But 
mind you, I play women only as my friends play 
golf or solitaire. Beyond occasionally giving them 
a tip that some friend has given me in strict con- 
fidence, I never mention business to them at all. They 
don’t know anything about it in the first place, and 
in the second place, they all talk — all of them.” 

45 


THE OCTOPUS 


So far the interview was not at all what Sheldon 
had expected, and when he looked up suddenly and 
his eyes met Thole’s, his surprise and perplexity were 
very evident. 

Thole’s straight lips relaxed into something that 
resembled a smile. He sank farther back into his 
chair, put his feet on the edge of the desk, and with 
his hands clasped behind his head sat for some 
moments staring up at the ceiling. 

“A little surprised, eh?” he said dryly. “Didn’t 
expect me to be quite so confidential? Well, I’ll be 
honest with you, Mr. Sheldon. I like your looks. I 
think we’ll get on together. I believe you’re going 
to be able to help me in one way or another. Be- 
sides — ” He dropped his feet to the floor and looked 
evenly into the eyes of the young man across the 
desk. “Besides, I made a promise to your mother 
once, and I don’t remember now that I ever broke a 
promise — certainly not to a woman. 

“You’ll find that there are a good many ways to 
live in New York, and you’ll have to do your own 
choosing — pick out your own life and your own 
friends. But if you take my advice you’ll always 
be a good mixer, and I’m pretty sure one way to get 
on in business is to trail with the boss — in, and 
46 


THE OCTOPUS 


especially out of, office-hours. Find out his weak- 
nesses if he has any, and never leave him if you have 
to put him to bed. No sane man’s going* to give you 
the combination to his safe when the sun’s shining. 
Night time is the time to ask and grant favors. Do 
you believe that these four naked walls would ever 
permit me to put my name on the note of the best 
friend I ever had? I don’t.” 

With sudden confidence Archie Sheldon smiled at 
the grim face across the desk. “And yet, Mr. Thole, 
you are doing me a favor, a very great favor.” 

The financier nodded and twisted his cigar slowly 
between his lips. “Yes, in a way you’re right, but 
when I promised to do this particular favor I was 
not surrounded by these four bare walls. So, you 
see, we both win.” 

The next day Sheldon started his labors under 
the watchful eye of Slade, the private secretary, a 
well-groomed young man, sometimes silent, sometimes 
loquacious when the situation demanded, and with a 
brain that seemed to Sheldon a perfectly appointed 
storehouse filled with an accurate knowledge of all 
men and of all their past deeds. Under this course 
of private instruction, the boy from Dunham grad- 
47 


THE OCTOPUS 


ually acquired a fairly thorough knowledge of the 
enterprises of his employer, and something, too, of 
the position that he held in the world of trade and 
finance. In a short space of time he ceased to look 
for the name of Thatcher Thole in the published 
lists of citizens who were prominent in the social life, 
or who stood behind the great public charities of 
the city, for he knew that he would not find it there ; 
and yet, the farther his knowledge grew the more 
he appreciated how great was the power of this man 
and in how many different directions it extended. 
One afternoon on his way up-town in the subway he 
heard one of two men who sat opposite him mention 
his employer’s name. 

“Nice trick Thole turned to-day, eh? Must have 
cleaned up a small fortune. Charming crook.” 

“Wonderful,” said the other man. “Always re- 
minds me of a cartoon I saw in a newspaper once 
of a colossus sitting at the gates of Wall Street, 
shearing the lambs as they entered and casting them 
adrift quite naked and shivering with the cold. I 
never saw him, did you?” 

The first man nodded. “Yes, often at the theatre 
and lobster restaurants. I went to a supper he gave 
in a private room once — it seems he was shy of 
48 


THE OCTOPUS 


guests, and some girl friend of his asked me. He’s 
a big rangy cuss ; sat at the head of the table look- 
ing like death at the feast. It was a good supper 
though, so I suppose that’s all right.” 

“Sure, it’s all right,” the other man said, and they 
went on reading their newspapers. 

When he was away from the office, the days and 
nights of Archie Sheldon were not unlike the first 
days and nights of most young men who come from 
small country towns to make their fortunes in the 
big market-place. He was quite conscious that all 
about him were many worlds of people, each leading 
its own life, and he was equally conscious that he 
had no part in any one of them. If there was a way 
to break into any of these closed circles of human 
beings whose interests seemed to be devoted to busi- 
ness, or society, or music, or charity, or the lighter 
pleasures of a great city, he had not yet discovered 
that way. Even the clerks and the women stenog- 
raphers in the big rooms at the office down-town 
were forever whispering of their parties and dances, 
but he knew that he could not be part of their lives, 
even had he wished to be let in. He was shut up in 
Slade’s little room, which connected directly with the 
private office of the great Thole himself, and there- 
49 


THE OCTOPUS 


fore he was held as one apart, a little superior to 
the rest of the force, and he knew that this was 
as his employer would have it and that he must 
acknowledge this responsibility and be thoroughly 
lonely in consequence. 

Only once had he met any of Thole’s employees 
away from the office. He had been at a vaudeville 
performance, and afterward had gone to the College 
Inn, partly because he was hungry, but principally 
for a glimpse of the gay life of which he had already 
heard much from the worldly-wise Slade. At a little 
table directly across the narrow room from his own, 
he was quite sure that he recognized one of the girls 
who worked in the outside office ; but instead of the 
simple black dress in which he was accustomed to 
see her, she now wore a flaring pink hat with a great 
white plume and a lace waist cut low and decorated 
with a huge brooch of imitation diamonds. In an- 
swer to his smiling greeting she looked him steadily 
in the eyes, and then returned to her conversation 
with the young man who was with her. The next 
morning Sheldon, as was his custom, arrived at the 
office at least half an hour before Thole or Slade was 
expected to put in an appearance. No sooner was 
he at his desk than the girl came in and, having 
50 


THE OCTOPUS 


assured herself that he was alone, cautiously closed 
the door behind her. 

“How are you?” Sheldon said. “I’m glad you 
recognize me this morning.” 

For a moment the girl hesitated at the doorway, 
and then crossed the room and with an air of much 
assurance sat on the edge of the desk. The simple 
cloth skirt she wore fitted her closely and showed 
every line of her well-rounded figure. She twisted 
her mouth into a smile of understanding and tossed 
her chin prettily in the air. “Caught me with the 
goods, eh?” she laughed. “I was flabbergasted when 
I saw you come in last night; I somehow never 
thought of you going to a place like the Inn. You 
won’t tell the old man, will you?” 

Sheldon shook his head. “Does that sort of thing 
amuse you?” he asked. 

“Sure! Why not? If you hammered a typewriter 
all day I guess it would amuse you, too. But I’d 
get fired if Slade or the old man knew of it. It’s 
too near their own game. I don’t take a chance 
often on Broadway, but it’s a lot better than the 
rink and the Circle restaurants. There’s really not 
much risk, because I keep clear of Rector’s and 
Churchill’s and those swell joints where Thole hangs 
51 


THE OCTOPUS 


out. Gee, but I got a shock when you walked in on 
me! You won’t tell though, will you?” 

Again Archie shook his head. 

“’Bliged,” she said, and with a smile of friendly 
confidence moved away from the desk. When she 
reached the door she turned to him. “A girl’s got 
to have a good time once in a while,” she said quite 
seriously, “after working a six-hour day, and espe- 
cially after those twenty years of misspent youth I 
wasted with the folks in Poughkeepsie. I knew you 
were a sport and would understand. Bye-bye.” 

At one o’clock every day Sheldon lunched with 
Thole and Slade and any of the lambs whose wool 
seemed sufficiently fine and long enough for Thole to 
shear. In a body they all adjourned to a neighbor- 
ing restaurant, and to the insidious strains of a 
Hungarian band Thole fattened the lambs with 
plenty of good food and wine preparatory to the 
slaughter. Even if it was his employer who paid 
the check at the end of every meal, Sheldon soon 
learned that he, in his own way, was expected to 
pay his share. He was always placed between two 
of the lambs, and, according to previous instructions 
received from the diplomatic Slade, it was his part 
to lead the conversation to, or perhaps away from, 
52 


THE OCTOPUS 


certain enterprises. Oftentimes Thole was not ready 
to launch his purpose so early as the luncheon-hour, 
and then the repast became a purely social occasion 
at which politics and the drama and the ladies of 
the theatrical profession were discussed in lighter 
vein. But even this favorite topic was not without 
a motive, for it always led to a suggestion on the 
part of the host that he would like to have his friends 
at dinner that night and go to a musical comedy 
afterward. Invariably at this point Thole’s straight 
lips would waver into a smile, and he would blink 
his steel-gray eyes at the circle of lambs about the 
table and suggest somewhat diffidently that, if agree- 
able to all of the party, he would try to induce some 
of the ladies of the chorus to join them at supper, 
after the theatre. And the lambs, who usually came 
from adjacent cities, would accept the invitation 
with alacrity and express their particular delight at 
the prospect of having some of the ladies of the 
chorus with them at supper. 

So far Archie Sheldon had never been asked to 
one of these parties, but he felt that he was gradually 
gaining the confidence of Thole, and that some day 
he would become a part of the old man’s hours of 
relaxation just, for instance, as Slade had become. 
53 


THE OCTOPUS 


In the meantime there was little in his life beyond 
his work to interest or amuse him, and there were 
moments when he was greatly tempted to throw it 
all up and go back to the uneventful days and the 
quieter nights at Dunham. Every evening after 
supper, he wrote a letter to his mother. She always 
had been and still was the best part of his life, and 
the greatest pleasure of some new incident that 
happened during the day was that he could write to 
her about it at night. His fellow boarders at the 
house in which he lived on West Forty-fifth Street 
were a dull, soggy set of souls, who worked down- 
town during the day and in the evening sat about 
the boarding-house, the men collarless and the women 
in wrappers, and all reading the evening newspapers. 
Only the girl who lived in the little room at the end 
of his hallway interested him at all, and that was 
but the interest of pity, and the natural admiration 
a man has for any girl who is making a good fight. 
She was a pretty, very pale little thing with a great 
deal of soft brown hair and big brown eyes, a slightly 
turned-up nose, and a small mouth with cupid-bow 
lips. Ever since Sheldon had known her she had 
been suffering from a cold, and often the spells of 
coughing were so severe that she would leave the table 
54 


THE OCTOPUS 


and hurry to her room, and then the boarders would 
glance at each other dolefully, shake their heads in 
an ominous way, and return to their modest dinner. 
It was very late one night when the attacks of cough- 
ing had been particularly hard that Sheldon, unable 
to sleep, knocked at the girl’s door and asked if he 
could be of some assistance. In reply, Violet Rein- 
hardt — for that was the girl’s name — opened the 
door and asked her visitor to come in. It was an 
absurdly small room, with a single window opening 
on a court. There were a bed, a bureau, and a wash- 
stand, a single chair, and a trunk with a label that 
read, “Baltimore Belles-Hotel.” Even in the dim 
light of the single gas-jet Sheldon could see that the 
carpet was ragged and the wall-paper faded and 
soiled. There were no curtains at the window, no 
pictures on the walls, nor photographs on the bureau 
— the room was quite shocking in its naked poverty. 
With one hand the girl held her chintz wrapper to- 
gether and with the other brushed back the mass of 
brown hair from her pale forehead. 

“I hope I haven’t kept you awake with my cough- 
ing,” she apologized ; “it’s awful bad to-night. 
Won’t you sit down?” 

Sheldon sat on the chair and the girl opposite him 

55 


THE OCTOPUS 


on the bed among the mass of tousled sheets and 
blankets. She saw him glance at the label on the 
trunk and seemed to think that it deserved an 
explanation. 

“I used to be with a burlesque troupe. Just like 
most kids in small towns I was crazy to go on the 
stage and ran away, but I couldn’t go the one-night 
stands and the travel. Gee, but that’s a tough 
game — those burlesque troupes — twice a day most 
of the time!” 

“And now?” asked Sheldon. 

The girl leaned her elbows on her knees and rested 
her chin between her palms. “Now,” she sighed, 
“just now I’m posing. That’s why my cold’s so bad 
— the studio where I was working was awful cold — no 
fire and me posing for Cupid.” The girl looked down 
at her bare ankles and the big gray woollen slippers 
she wore, and smiled grimly at the thought. It was 
the first time that Sheldon had seen her smile, and 
for the first time he saw that Miss Reinhardt had 
a certain piquant beauty, that kind of beauty that 
cannot well be denied. 

“Does posing pay?” he asked. 

The girl glanced about at the bare, cheerless room. 
“About eighteen a week, but the doctors ’ve been 
56 


THE OCTOPUS 


getting most of that. They don’t even leave me 
enough to dress on decently.” Her pale lips broke 
into a smile. “But, you see, you don’t need many 
clothes when you pose for Cupid. I saw a dress 
to-day though in a window on Fifth Avenue. It was 
all lacy and had little gold threads in it, and there 
was a cape to match, and a big black hat went with 
it. Just for fun I went in and asked one of the 
salesladies what the whole outfit would cost, and she 
said she’d let me have it as a special favor for five 
hundred, and then we both looked at my torn coat 
and had a good laugh over it. Just the same, if I 
ever got that five hundred dollars’ worth of rags on 
I’d make some of those show-girls sitting around 
Rector’s sit up and take notice.” 

“Of course you would,” Sheldon said, and moved 
toward the door. “There’s nothing I can do for 
you?” he asked. “I mean nothing I can get you to 
help you to sleep?” 

She smiled and shook the pretty mass of brown 
hair. “No, thank you,” she said. “Obliged for your 
visit. Don’t make yourself strange, now that we’re 
acquainted. Good night.” 

As yet, all Sheldon knew of Thole and of the 

57 


THE OCTOPUS 


kind of life he led outside of business was the little 
he had learned from the private secretary and from 
the glimpses he had enjoyed on the infrequent oc- 
casions when he had wandered alone and as a stranger 
into the big supper-restaurants of Broadway. After 
the dull pleasures of Dunham, these glimpses of the 
white-light district had seemed bright enough to the 
young man, especially as no other social life seemed 
open to him, or ever would be open so long as he 
remained a trusted servant of his present employer. 
Even to the inexperienced eyes of Archie Sheldon 
the somewhat dubious position of Thole in the busi- 
ness and social worlds of New York was becoming 
very evident. On several occasions when he had 
carried confidential messages to some of the great 
men in the world of finance and had told them 
whence he came, he noticed that they regarded him 
with just a shade of curiosity and surprise; once on 
leaving a broker’s private office, he had stopped for 
a moment outside, and through the open transom he 
had heard the voice of the broker saying to his 
secretary, “and such a nice, good-looking boy, 
too.” 

It was late in November, four months after his 
arrival in New York, when Sheldon was first asked 
58 


THE OCTOPUS 


to supper by his employer. Tired of spending his 
evenings at the boarding-house, he had gone to the 
theatre, and there from his seat in the orchestra he 
had seen Thole in a box with two women friends. 
Both of them were conspicuous on account of the 
low-cut gowns and big black picture hats they wore, 
and both, at least in the eyes of Sheldon, were su- 
perlatively beautiful. Thole, crouched in a wicker 
chair, sat in the back of the box occasionally glanc- 
ing at the stage between the bare shoulders of his 
companions. After the first act was over the two 
men met in the lobby. Thole greeted the younger 
one cordially and offered him a cigarette, or to buy 
him a drink, both of which invitations Sheldon re- 
fused. After this, Thole seemed to hesitate for a 
few moments and then: “Why not come into my 
box and meet my friends? There’s plenty of room, 
and we’re going to my place afterward for a little 
supper.” 

Sheldon accepted the proposition with alacrity, 
and was led into the box and presented to the two 
ladies. When the performance began again he noticed 
that their entire interest seemed centered, not in the 
principals, but in the six show girls, with whom they 
frequently exchanged smiling glances. Every few 
59 


THE OCTOPUS 


minutes one of the two women, in an apparent effort 
to be civil to Sheldon, would turn to him and say 
with a forced enthusiasm, “Don’t you think Maizie 
looks lovely in that pink frock?” or, “Isn’t Eunice 
the prettiest show-girl in town?” And Sheldon 
would smile and say that he agreed thoroughly. 
Thole himself sat silent in the back of the box, and 
when the show-girls were not on the stage, the two 
women looked at the audience and were apparently 
thoroughly bored. When the performance was 
nearly over they arose in a most stately manner, 
gazed once more at the audience in a supercilious 
way, smiled again pleasantly at the show-girls 
nearest them on the stage, and then, led by Thole, 
and with a great rustling of their silken skirts, 
walked proudly out of the box. Sheldon followed 
in the wake of the party, not knowing whether 
to feel rather pleased or thoroughly embarrassed. 
Thole’s car was waiting for them, and in a few 
minutes they were at his apartment overlooking the 
park on West Fifty-ninth Street. At the doorway 
Sheldon hesitated for a moment in wide-eyed wonder. 
The flames from the big wood fire and a light con- 
cealed by a great golden-colored globe filled the 
place with a dull orange glow, and threw fantastic 
60 


THE OCTOPUS 


shadows on the scarlet silk walls, the high tapestried 
and gilded chairs, the great white bearskin before 
the hearth, the soft deep Persian rugs, the cabinets 
filled with fragile, delicately colored glass, and the 
glistening mahogany side-boards loaded with massive 
pieces of silver. To more practised eyes it was an 
apartment in which great luxury and comfort were 
marred by a conspicuous lack of good taste, but to 
Sheldon it was all quite beautiful. 

“It’s like a glimpse of fairyland,” he ventured to 
remark to Miss Fannie Brugiere. Miss Brugiere 
was very dark, with a lovely oval face and masses of 
black hair, which she wore in two great waves over 
her broad white forehead. 

“It’s good enough,” she said indifferently; “quite 
comfy,” and she shrugged her wonderful bare 
shoulders. 

“Come in, Fannie, and help me,” Thole called from 
the dining-room. “I sent the servants home, and 
we have got to look out for ourselves.” 

The other girl — Miss Lillian Lester — walked over 
to a high French window and pulling back the cur- 
tain beckoned Sheldon to join her. “Did you ever 
see the view from here?” she asked. “It’s quite 
lovely.” 


61 


THE OCTOPUS 


Through the little square window-panes they looked 
out on the starlit sky and the many lights of the 
taxicabs twinkling through the trees at the edge of 
the park. Of his new acquaintances Sheldon instinc- 
tively preferred Miss Lester. As if in studied con- 
trast to the dark Junoesque Miss Brugiere she was 
very blonde, with a pink-and-white skin and round 
blue eyes which, with her scarlet lips, seemed to be 
always smiling in a most friendly fashion, and in- 
viting one’s confidence. For some moments they 
stood in the window, silently looking out at the vivid 
beauty of the night, and then it was the girl who 
spoke. 

“You seem to be a great friend of Thole’s. Why 
have I never met you before?” 

“I don’t know exactly,” Sheldon said, a little 
confused. “I don’t really know why he’s never asked 
me before. I’ve known him only a few months.” 

“I see. You’ve not lived in New York long, have 
you?” 

“No,” Sheldon said. “How did you know that?” 

Miss Lester smiled her sweet smile at him and 
tossed her dimpled chin in the air. “Oh, I don’t 
know exactly. You’re just different. I think we’d 
better join the others now.” 

62 


THE OCTOPUS 


As his first glimpse of the gay life of New York 
it did not appeal to Sheldon as a very brilliant affair. 
The wit and sparkle seemed in no way commensurate 
with the wealth of the surroundings or the beauty 
of the women. No one except himself seemed the 
least interested in the many good things to eat, 
and the talk never rose above the level of the gossip 
of the stage and the men who openly courted its 
women. The host seldom spoke, ate nothing, but 
occasionally sipped a glass of champagne and 
smoked a long black cigar continually. 

“Sort of dull, ain’t it, Archie?” he said after a 
long silence. “I wish I’d ordered up some coon- 
shouters ; they might have livened things up a little. 
But it ain’t always as quiet as this.” 

Miss Brugiere cast a reproachful glance at Thole 
and Lillian Lester, as if to show that she was not 
without spirit had she wished to show it, and asked 
for another glass of champagne. “Don’t you ever 
want to be quiet?” she complained. “I should think, 
Thole, that you’d get tired of rough-house parties 
sometimes.” 

“I don’t care,” he said, “I don’t care, but I was 
sorry for Archie. It’s the first time he’s been out 
63 


THE OCTOPUS 


with me, and I sort of wanted him to have a good 
time.” 

“I’ll turn a flip-flap,” Miss Lester suggested, “or 
sing a song, or kick the Venetian globes out of that 
million-dollar chandelier overhead if you say so, but 
don’t blame us because you haven’t brought Mr. 
Sheldon out with you before. Goodness knows he’s 
better than most of the kikes and rubes you travel 
with. Now if ” 

“I had good reason,” Thole interrupted, appar- 
ently wholly ignorant of Sheldon’s presence, “good 
reason and plenty for not bringing him along. 
How’d I know he wouldn’t break into another crowd? 
Broadway isn’t New York.” 

Sheldon smiled pleasantly across the table at his 
host. “Why, Mr. Thole,” he said, “you told me the 
first time I saw you that the way to get on was to 
trail with the boss, especially after office-hours. I’m 
trailing now, and I like it.” 

The two women laughed aloud, “How about it?” 
said Miss Lester. 

Thole pulled at his cigar, blew a cloud of smoke 
across the white table-cloth, and watched it being 
sucked up by the pink candle-shades. “That’s 
right,” he said, “I told him that very thing, and I 
64 


THE OCTOPUS 


was sorry for it afterward. There was only one 
good piece of advice I could have given him, and 
I knew that he would pay no heed to that, so I told 
him the next best thing I knew.” 

Miss Lester reached across the table to a box of 
cigarettes, and taking one, slowly rolled it between 
her long white fingers. “That’s most interesting,” 
she said. “What would be your real advice to a 
young man starting in New York?” 

Thole looked at the girl and smiled grimly into 
the big blue eyes. “I’d tell him to go home.” 

Lillian Lester shook her fluffy yellow hair and 
laughed aloud. “That is funny,” she said. 

“Was it funny last summer,” Thole asked, “when 
you came to me and begged me for the money to 
send you back to Middleboro, where you said they 
knew you as Maggie Somebody, and had never heard 
of you as Lillian Lester? I loaned you that money 
just because you told me you wanted to get back 
for a month with the boys and girls you knew when 
you were a kid. Am I right or am I wrong? I know. 
I went back myself once, but I was the regular thing, 
for I was well heeled. I played the whole four acts 
— bought the old place, put in enamel bath-tubs, and 
65 


THE OCTOPUS 

turned the stable into a garage big enough for six 
cars.” 

Miss Lester leaned her elbows on the table and 
rested her chin between her palms. “Well?” she 
asked. 

“Well, I didn’t find it — the peace and quiet I’d 
been looking forward to and working for for thirty 
years. It wasn’t there, all right — that is, it wasn’t 
there for me. They’d taken my love for that away 
from me, but they’d put something else there in its 
place; they’d just plain poisoned my whole system. 
I’d been going too hard and too fast for thirty years 
to slow down, and so I hurried back. I suppose I 
was afraid I’d miss something. But do you think 
that there is anything in this big town that can take 
the place of the peace and content of that farm? I 
don’t. I tell you this town poisons you. Some of 
us live through it, and some of us don’t, but we all 
die with it in our systems. And the worst of it is 
that it isn’t confined to New York — this town ought 
to be segregated, but you can’t segregate it. It’s 
the fountain-head for the rotten books and the filthy 
plays and the stories of the gay life of the Great 
White Way, as they call it, and the romances of 
fortunes made overnight on the stock-market; and 
66 


THE OCTOPUS 


the rotten plays and the tales of Broadway and Wall 
Street are sent scurrying over the country like bad 
blood chasing through the veins of some great fine 
brute of an animal. It’s an octopus, I tell you, an 
octopus, and its dirty tentacles stretch to every 
village in America.” 

Lillian Lester smiled across the table at Thole and 
shook her pretty blond curls. “It misses some towns 
all right, all right. If you’d spent the summer with 
me at Middleboro you’d believe me. There’s no New 
York blood has reached that burg yet.” 

“No?” said Thole. “How about that young sister 
of yours you brought back with you? Didn’t she 
tell me herself the other night at Rector’s that she 
had been a stenographer in a bank at home, and lived 
with her family, and was contented enough till she 
got a peep at your pretty dresses and your fine 
underclothes? She told me how they used to dry 
your things in the kitchen so the neighbors wouldn’t 
know. I guess New York got to her one way or 
another all right, even if she did live in Middleboro.” 

During the last few words Miss Lester’s pink 
pretty face went quite white, but she kept her lips 
hard pressed and gazed blankly across the table into 
the big bovine eyes of Miss Brugiere. 

67 


THE OCTOPUS 


“And how Is it with you, Fannie?” Thole asked. 
“I’ll bet you came from some little town, brought 
here by some fairy tales of the great city, eh? Am 
I right or am I wrong?” 

“Not so little — Kansas City.” 

Thole nodded. “Well, even if I missed that guess 
I’ll bet your folks were quiet, respectable, law- 
abiding citizens.” 

The girl leaned over the table and looked Thole 
evenly in the eyes. “You can cut out my people 
from this talk. They’ve got no more to do with 
you and your kind than they have with me.” 

Miss Brugiere sank back in her chair and daubed 
her tear-stained eyes with an exquisitely small lace 
handkerchief. 

“I’m sorry,” said Thole, “but that’s the answer.” 

“Well, there’s one thing certain,” Sheldon laughed, 
“this New York poison never got as far as Dunham. 
At least if it did I never knew of it.” 

Thole’s teeth closed hard on his cigar, and for a 
moment he sat silent, his eyes blinking at the pink 
candle-shades. Then : “That’s good, Archie. I hope 
you never may.” 

Miss Brugiere stirred uneasily and with a stifled 
yawn rose from the table. “I’m tired of hearing 
68 


THE OCTOPUS 


you rave, Thole,” she said, smiling. “Who’s going 
to take me home?” 

Thole pulled himself slowly to his feet. “The car 
is waiting for you down-stairs. Sheldon can take 
you both home. I’m sorry, Archie,” he added, 
stretching his long arms above his head, “but I’m 
tired, dead beat.” 

The women went into the bedroom to put on their 
wraps, and for the moment the two men were left 
alone. Sheldon was standing before the fireplace, 
and Thole walked over to him and laid his hand 
gently on the younger man’s shoulder. In the dim 
light of the burning logs he looked into Sheldon’s 
eyes. 

“You’re wonderfully like your mother sometimes,” 
he said, “wonderfully like.” For a moment he hesi- 
tated, as if uncertain as to just how to express him- 
self further. He tossed his half-smoked cigar into 
the grate, and with the tip of his tongue moistened 
his dry lips. “I’m sorry,” he said at last, “I’m very 
sorry about to-night.” 

“Sorry?” Sheldon repeated. “Why, I’ve had a 
grand time. I enjoyed every minute of it.” 

Thole nodded. “I’m glad of that. It seemed to 
me to be pretty dull, and then — well, I’d always 
69 


THE OCTOPUS 


hoped that you might take up with a different crowd. 
Of course these girls — ■” He hesitated for a moment, 
and before the sentence was finished the women had 
returned. 

Sheldon and Lillian Lester left Miss Brugiere at 
her apartment and then started on the last stage 
of their journey to Miss Lester’s home, which was 
far over on the West Side. As they turned from 
the avenue into the broad deserted plaza at the en- 
trance to the park, Miss Lester settled back into 
the deep cushions, and as if from sheer weariness 
closed her eyes. The big car purred on its way over 
the smooth frosted roadways, and the very speed at 
which they flew by the long rows of leafless trees 
warned Sheldon that his first night of happiness in 
New York was fast nearing an end. For some time 
there was silence, and then he turned to his com- 
panion. Her chin was sunk deep in the collar of 
her long fur coat, her eyes were still closed, but about 
her lips there was the same friendly smile that had 
first attracted him to her and added so much to the 
real beauty of the girl. 

“I’m afraid you’re very tired,” he said. “It must 
have been an awful bore to you, sitting about all 
night with Thole and me.” 


70 


THE OCTOPUS 


Miss Lester shook her pretty head and opened her 
eyes as if in wonder at the thought. “A bore?” she 
repeated softly. “I don’t know when I’ve been 
much happier than I was to-night. I loved it.” 

Sheldon looked eagerly into the now wide-open 
eyes. “Why?” he asked, “why?” 

Again the eyes closed, and quickly putting out 
her gloved hand she touched the sleeve of his coat 
and as quickly drew it back again. “I guess it 
must have been you,” she whispered. “You see, 
you’re so different from the rest. I knew that I 
was going to like you the minute you came into the 
box.” 

The big car swung sharply from the dark roadway 
into the broad, brilliantly lighted street, and Miss 
Lester slowly pulled herself out of the comfort of the 
deep cushions and sat up very erect on the edge of 
the seat. 

“We’re almost there,” she sighed. “It seems only 
a few moments since we left Fannie’s.” 

“Then it’s good night,” he said, “and you are 
going to let me see you very soon again, and we are 
going to be great friends, aren’t we?” 

She put out her hand, and for a few moments it 
rested in both of his, while for the first time he saw 
71 


THE OCTOPUS 


the smile leave her lips and a new and very serious 
look come into the blue eyes. 

“It’s up to you,” she said simply. “That’s just 
how it is — it’s all up to you.” 

Uneventful as the night of his first supper-party 
may have been to the others, it was marked by 
the second mile-stone in the life of young Sheldon. 
The next morning Thole called him into his office 
and told him that, owing to his close attention to 
business, he had decided to raise his salary, and the 
increase was of considerable proportions. A few 
days later, as a further reward for his faithful ser- 
vices, Thole announced that he had opened a joint 
account on behalf of himself and Sheldon and that 
the stock in which he had invested should show 
a quick and substantial profit. With this turn in 
Archie’s financial condition there came many other 
changes. He moved from the boarding-house on 
Forty-fifth Street to a small apartment in a more 
modish neighborhood and went to a good tailor, 
who made him clothes suitable to his new social re- 
sponsibilities. For advice in these and similar mat- 
ters he turned to Slade, whose knowledge of such 
affairs, at least to Archie, seemed unlimited. Almost 
72 


THE OCTOPUS 

every night now he dined with Thole and was a wel- 
come guest at his numerous supper-parties. Some 
nights they dined alone, at other times Slade was 
with them, and often Thole had as his guests the out- 
of-town lambs who were ready to be robbed of their 
golden fleece. In Thole’s manner of winning these 
men over as investors in his enterprises there was much 
that Sheldon resented. He knew that many of these 
ventures could result in profit to his employer only, 
but the worldly-wise Slade had assured him over and 
over again that Thole’s methods were the modern 
methods of business and practised by all successful 
promoters and financiers. It was only at the hour 
before dinner when Sheldon wrote his daily letter to 
Dunham that he ever questioned the moral side of 
the day’s work. The changes that had come so 
rapidly into his life seemed to leave him little of which 
he could write to his mother, but for this he com- 
forted himself with the thought that she was of 
another generation and was quite incapable of under- 
standing the kind of life that stood for modern suc- 
cess. Further to moderate his feelings of distrust 
in himself and his new life was his real admiration 
for the tremendous force and the subtle craftiness of 
the man who now controlled him, because, despised 
73 


THE OCTOPUS 


as he may have been, Thole’s daring had made him 
a giant in a city where the power of money is the 
goal of so many men. The door to the particular 
society in which Thole moved once opened to him, 
Sheldon found the rest easy enough. The language 
of the men, which never extended beyond the stock- 
market and the gossip of Broadway, was not difficult 
to speak, and the women, however dull they might be, 
were always affable. Indeed, the young man from 
the country, with his good looks and frank manner 
and his clean, fresh point of view, was universally 
regarded as a most welcome change from the average 
bored New-Yorker, and in consequence Archie was 
received by the ladies of Thole’s world with flattering 
favor. 

“I wonder,” said Miss Fannie Brugiere on the 
occasion of a supper-party at which Sheldon was 
not present, “I really wonder what makes that 
young man so extremely popular with our set?” 

“I know,” suggested Lillian Lester. “It’s because 
he hasn’t taken that New York poison that worries 
Thole such a lot, and, incidentally, he treats every 
chorus girl as if she were a duchess.” 

Miss Brugiere smiled at her friend across the 
table, and shook her head. “You might be right, at 
74 


THE OCTOPUS 


that, Lillian,” she said, “but at what particular part 
of your career did you learn how duchesses were 
treated?” 

“Duchesses!” exclaimed Miss Lester. “Didn’t I 
play one of the six duchesses in ‘The Earl and 
the Girl’? Sure I know how the Johnnies treat 
duchesses.” 

“No, you didn’t,” Miss Brugiere replied, with some 
little show of annoyance. “I was one of the duch- 
esses ; you were in the other set of show-girls.” 

“That’s right,” Miss Lester agreed. “I remember 
now; I mas to be a duchess, and then Julian took 
me out of it and put me in the big number — what 
did they call it? — ‘The March of the Cocottes’ — I 
knew I’d learned swell manners somewhere.” And 
then the conversation, which was never devoted to 
any one topic for any great length of time, changed 
to detailed descriptions of what the ladies were to 
wear at the opening of the Cafe de l’Opera. 

It was a very busy life that Sheldon enjoyed now, 
filled during the day with new business schemes and 
at night with many new faces. For a time it amused 
him greatly, and he was keenly conscious of the 
delight and pleasure that this constant excitement 
and change afforded him. And then, as he gradually 
75 


THE OCTOPUS 


became a fixed spoke in this particular social wheel 
of New York, the purely physical excitement grad- 
ually faded away, and the former pleasures developed 
into a necessary routine, the value of which only 
occurred to him when short business trips took him 
away from town and deprived him of it. Thoughts 
of Dunham and the mother who had once meant 
everything to him occupied his mind but little now, 
and his letter home was no longer included in the 
day’s routine. For a period of time these omissions 
caused him moments of sincere regret, but such mo- 
ments became more and more infrequent and besides 
this he no longer seemed capable of knowing regret 
or pleasure or any other feeling with the same depth 
that he had formerly known it. 

The four months that he had spent at the board- 
ing-house when he had first come to New York had 
been long forgotten in the pleasant warmth of his 
present comfort. It was a chance meeting with 
Violet Reinhardt late one January afternoon in Times 
Square that with a sudden shock recalled him to 
those unhappy days. It was bitterly cold, and he 
noticed that the short coat the girl wore was very 
thin and frayed, and her bare hands and bloodless 
lips looked half frozen from the sharp wind that 
76 


THE OCTOPUS 

blew great clouds of fine dry snow across the open 
square. 

In his haste to get out of the storm he did not 
recognize her, but the little figure stopped before 
him, and hesitatingly the girl put out her hand. He 
took it in both of his and pressed it with a real 
warmth of feeling at which even he himself won- 
dered. 

“Hello!” he cried. “I am glad to see you again. 
How are you ?” 

She looked up at him and smiled as cheerfully as 
she could. “Oh, I’m all right, I guess.” 

He still held her right hand, but with her left she 
reached up and brushed the snow from the fur collar 
of his overcoat. “No use in asking you how you are,” 
she said, “you with your sable furs. Things must 
have broken pretty good for you since you quit the 
boarding-house.” 

“Oh, pretty well, thank you,” he laughed. “Come 
in to Rector’s and tell me all about yourself and the 
folks at the boarding-house. It’s only a step.” 

She glanced down at her worn coat and short 
ragged skirt. “I’m not fit,” she said. 

Sheldon tucked her hand under his arm and led 
her reluctantly toward the restaurant. It was just 
77 


THE OCTOPUS 


past five o’clock, and the big brilliantly lighted room 
was almost deserted. The little groups of idle, black- 
coated waiters turned to look in wonder at Archie 
Sheldon’s new girl friend. In the glare of her pres- 
ent surroundings she looked like a waif rescued 
from the streets. They sat at a little side table 
and, with a funny grimace, Violet began to warm 
her half-frozen fingers under the rose-colored lamp- 
shade. 

“Do you like anything better than champagne?” 
he said. 

“Sure not, but you certainly must have struck it 
rich to be buying Tiffany water at five in the after- 
noon. There’s some class to our ex-boarder, eh, 
what ?” 

Sheldon smiled at the smiling face across the table. 
The warmth of the room was gradually bringing the 
color back to her cheeks, and her big eyes were fairly 
glistening with excitement. 

“This is a very unusual event,” he explained sol- 
emnly; “it’s a reunion. Now tell me all about vour- 
self.” 

“It’s just the same — still posing.” 

“And the cough?” 

The girl shook her head, and the sparkle suddenly 

78 


THE OCTOPUS 


faded out of her eyes. “I know an artist who is 
pretty strong 'with a specialist, and the doc promised 
to give me his honest opinion for nothing. It was 
honest, all right. He sentenced me to the Adiron- 
dacks for a whole year.” 

“Well,” Archie asked, “what are you going to do 
about it?” 

“What am I going to do about it? He might as 
well have recommended an automobile trip to Cali- 
fornia or a cruise in a yacht to Monte Carlo. The 
cheapest he said I could live up there would be ten 
dollars a week, and where can I get the five hundred? 
Besides, I’d hate to be away from the big town a 
whole year.” 

“Don’t be foolish,” Sheldon urged ; “it might mean 
the saving of your life.” 

The girl shrugged her shoulders, and with one 
nervous gulp emptied her glass of champagne. “I 
don’t want to save my life,” she said, “if it means 
living in the Adirondacks. Gee, it would be lonely 
up there and everybody sick about you! I want to 
stay where people are jolly, and where it’s warm like 
it is in here.” She looked up and smiled with un- 
derstanding. “Yes, even if I have to see it from 
the streets.” 


79 


THE OCTOPUS 


“But in a year you could come back to this — if 
this is what you want so much. You’d be well then 
and able to enjoy it.” 

Sheldon had somehow come to feel that the chance 
meeting of this afternoon had put the responsibility 
of the girl’s future in his hands. Five hundred dol- 
lars seemed such a paltry sum to stand between death 
and a human life. 

“Suppose,” he said, “that I could get you the 
money ?” 

She looked up at him with wide-eyed wonder. “I’ve 
known men to offer big money to women to stay in 
New York but never to leave it. Don’t talk foolish. 
Why should you give me five hundred? That’s 
enough about me — tell me some of the scandal. You 
seem to know the head waiter, and look as if you were 
in our set.” 

For a long time they sat there talking the gossip 
of the stage and of her life in the studios and at the 
boarding-house, and then the people began to arrive 
for dinner, and the gorgeous clothes of some of the 
women seemed to bring Violet to the sudden decision 
that her hour of gaiety was at an end. Sheldon put 
her in a taxicab, gave the chauffeur the address, and 
then, as he said good-by, pressed a yellow bill into 
80 


THE OCTOPUS 


the girl’s hand. “Pay the driver with that,” he 
said, “and good luck to you.” 

She glanced at the bill and waved her hand to him 
from the open window. “Thank you,” she cried, 
“and good luck to you. That was some party.” 

The next morning Sheldon went to Thole and told 
him that he was in immediate need of at least five 
hundred dollars, and that he would like to close out 
their joint account, which already showed a profit 
to his credit much greater than the sum needed. 
Late that afternoon he sent the money with a care- 
fully worded little note to Miss Reinhardt, and then 
he went to his rooms and for a long time sat smoking 
before the open fire. There was a great warmth of 
feeling that filled his whole mind and his body, the 
glow of happiness and contentment that comes after 
a day well spent — a happiness that he had not known 
since he first came to New York. In his own way 
God had put it within his power to save one of 
God’s own sparrows, and the religion which his mother 
had taught him came back to him with a great force, 
and he was very grateful for the chance that had 
come to him to do good. In the thrill of the moment 
he decided that he would go on doing good deeds, 
especially to “the least of these,” and then he re- 
81 


THE OCTOPUS 


membered what Thole had said of New York and 
how he had called it an octopus. At the thought of 
how very wrong the old man was Sheldon smiled in- 
dulgently and, as if in denial of Thole’s cynical 
words, slowly shook his head at the crackling logs 
in the fireplace. 

The next day he returned to the office with the 
same warmth of feeling in his heart and the same 
determination to do better things — things of which 
he could write to his mother at Dunham. That night 
he dined at Martin’s with Thple and Slade and sev- 
eral of their business friends, and although Sheldon 
was generally the brightest member of these some- 
what sombre dinner-parties, both Thole and his 
secretary noticed that on this occasion he seemed 
particularly happy and unusually entertaining to the 
other guests. The dinner was half over when Slade, 
who sat facing the vestibule, smiled at the men at 
the table. “Here comes something new,” he whis- 
pered, “and very beautiful. She looks like the Fol- 
lies of 1920.” 

Sheldon turned with the others, and saw Violet 
Reinhardt and a man just entering the door to the 
dining-room. Her small beautiful figure showed 
clearly through a filmy black dress with golden 
82 


THE OCTOPUS 


threads running through it; over her shoulders she 
wore a rose-colored cape, and the masses of soft 
brown hair were half concealed by a broad black 
hat. The pretty little face was more white than 
even its natural paleness, but the cupid’s-bow lips 
were scarlet now, and the contrast was at least won- 
derfully effective. As she approached Thole’s table 
she smiled at Sheldon, and then as she passed, with 
much bravado, made a little grimace at him. The 
other men at the table laughed and made some good- 
natured remarks about his beautiful young friend, 
but Sheldon was looking at the little figure sweeping 
down the aisle between the rows of white tables and 
apparently did not hear them. For some time after- 
ward he sat silent, his fellow guests believing, accord- 
ing to their Broadway logic, that being very young 
he was probably a little jealous of the other man. 
As a matter of fact, he was wondering how one of 
God’s sparrows, just for the delight of putting on 
gay plumage and for the happiness of a few days of 
warmth and ease, and for a few days of a certain 
kind of pleasure, could sacrifice a whole life; and 
once more, but in quite a different spirit from the 
last time, he remembered Thole’s words about the 
octopus. 


83 


THE OCTOPUS 


From the gradual breaking up of his faith there 
still remained to Archie Sheldon an unshaken belief 
in two people — his mother and Thatcher Thole — and 
it rose from the wreckage like the two splendid spars 
of a stranded ship. Whatever might be said of the 
personal life and questionable business methods of 
Thole, he had been to him, at least, all that a man 
could ask or hope for from his best friend. As for 
his mother, the broader life and the many, many 
people he had met of late only served to prove how 
wonderful a woman she really was. For the first time 
he began to appreciate the unselfishness of her love — 
how she had toiled and suffered to make his life happy, 
and he determined that some day, just as soon as 
he could spare the time, he would return to her and 
tell her how he had come to understand, and of the 
great depths of his gratitude. 

For Fannie Brugiere and Lillian Lester and their 
women friends, he tried to find their excuse in the 
narrow, cramped life of the small towns from which 
they came. Had he, too, not left his home in the 
hope of finding a broader life? All could not suc- 
ceed as he had succeeded, and even they had their 
own code of morals and, for the most part, lived up 
to them. In her own way Lillian Lester had tried 
84 


THE OCTOPUS 

very hard to be a friend to him. In his ignorance 
of affairs he had often turned to her, and her advice 
had always proved sane and wise, as that of the 
woman who has learned her knowledge by experience 
is fairly sure to be. From the first night that he 
had met her, he had in a way set her apart from 
the others. Her friendship had often been of inesti- 
mable value to him, and sometimes he stopped to won- 
der just how long such a friendship could remain 
only a friendship. When business called him out of 
town it was only to Lillian Lester that he wrote 
amusing letters of his adventures. It was Lillian 
Lester to whom he always wired asking her to dine 
with him on the night of his return, and, even with 
his conspicuous lack of vanity, he could not ignore 
the fact that the girl would break any previous en- 
gagement to accept these invitations. Down in his 
heart he was sure that she cared for him, just as he 
was sure that he cared for her; and he was sorry, 
because he knew that when love comes in at the door, 
especially the door of the particular world in which 
they both lived, then friendship is pretty sure to fly 
out at the window. With all the unconventionality 
of the lives of the people about him, Sheldon had been 
true to certain standards, and he wanted to remain 
85 


THE OCTOPUS 


true to them. In any case, he was sure that if he 
was to sink to the moral level of his friends he did 
not want it to be through the only one of them all 
for whom he really cared. 

It was late one afternoon when Miss Lester had 
dropped in at his apartment, as she did very often 
now, for a half-hour’s chat and a cup of tea. Out- 
side it was snowing and was bitterly cold, and Shel- 
don was very grateful and touched that she had 
cared enough to see him to leave her own pleasant 
fireside to come to his. The frosty air had given 
her pale cheeks an unusual color, her eyes were shin- 
ing, and never before had her flower-like beauty 
seemed so exquisite to him as it did now. With a 
warmth of feeling he had never shown before he put 
out his arms to her, and uttering a little cry of 
pleasure she ran toward him. At last her day of 
victory was at hand. But she had not counted on 
the puritanical teaching that still held him in its 
iron grip, for instead of putting his arms about her, 
he suddenly remembered himself, and gently laying 
his hands on her shoulders, kissed her on her cold 
forehead. With a little grimace she turned from 
him and, refusing his help, threw off her heavy coat 
and dropped into a low chair before the open fire. 

86 


THE OCTOPUS 


“Fm done,” she said; “you’re hopeless. I put on 
the very best clothes I’ve got in the world, come all 
the way downtown to see you, look just as pretty 
as I know how, and the best I get is the kind of 
kiss you would give your great-grandmother. I’m 
just plain discouraged. Is there anything that will 
melt you?” 

“Nothing will if you won’t,” he said. “The water 
in the kettle is boiling. You’d better make the tea.” 

Lillian pulled herself out of the chair, shrugged 
her shoulders, and crossed the room to the tea-table. 

“I’m sorry,” he begged, “I’m very sorry, especially 
to-day. You mayn’t believe me, but I was never so 
glad to see any one. I knew I was to see you to- 
night at Thole’s supper, and so I was afraid you 
wouldn’t come this afternoon.” 

“Don’t mention Thole to me,” she said abruptly. 
“I’m tired of him, and his supper-parties. Can’t you 
talk about our own troubles just for once?” 

It had long been in her mind to say what she 
thought of Thole, but she had chosen the wrong 
moment, and Sheldon came quickly to the defense 
of his employer. 

“Whatever he may have been to others,” he said 
hotly, “he has been mighty good to you and me.” 

87 


THE OCTOPUS 


Miss Lester slowly joined the tips of her long 
white fingers and looked steadily across the table 
into Sheldon’s excited eyes. “Yes and no, Archie,” 
she said in her low, soft voice. “I amuse him, and 
you are of great service to him. There are better 
things for a woman than to have her name mixed 
up with Thatcher Thole, and many better things for 
a man than to be known as ‘Thole’s fixer.’ Now don’t 
get excited. I’m only telling you this for your own 
good. Thole is no saint.” 

Sheldon nervously lighted a cigarette and going 
over to the fireplace stood looking at the calm, lovely 
features of Miss Lester. When he spoke it was with 
much spirit. “I know he’s no saint, nobody knows it 
better, but he’s taken pretty good care of me. I 
owe him a lot more than I can ever pay.” 

Miss Lester smiled and shook her pretty blond 
curls. “I wouldn’t let that bother me,” she said. “If 
the crowd that runs after Thole were the best crowd 
in New York it would be different, but it isn’t. It’s 
about the worst crowd outside of jail in the city. 
You are the only gentleman, if I may use the expres- 
sion, on his entire staff. You can do more with his 
clients than all the others put together. All the men 
say that, and I know that half the women who go 
88 


THE OCTOPUS 

to his parties would stay away if they didn’t know 
that you would be there. Fannie Brugiere is the 
only girl I know who really likes Thole — at least I 
like to think she does. The trouble with you is that 
you don’t know who’s who in New York. You began 
with Thole, and he’s never let you get away. The 
other men I know, for instance, and to whose parties 
I go, are gentlemen. I can’t introduce you to them, 
because that wouldn’t do you any more good than 
it helps you to be known as a friend of Thole. Do 
you think these men would go to one of his suppers? 
They play with the same women he does, but you 
bet they don’t know his men friends. There’s some 
class to these chaps, they belong to decent clubs, 
and ” 

Sheldon suddenly tossed his cigarette into the 
hearth. “That’ll do, Lillie,” he said, and there was 
a certain finality in his tone that made the girl flush 
and rise quickly to her feet. 

“It was for your own good, Archie.” 

He put her coat on, wrapped her fur collar 
about her throat, and led the way to the elevator. 
“Good-by,” he said. “I know you told me for my 
own good, but just the same it hurts. He’s been 
like a father to me.” 


89 


THE OCTOPUS 


She held out her hand to him. “Forgive me. 
Let’s be friends again.” 

“Sure, we’re the best of friends. Notwithstanding 
all you have just said, I suppose I’ll meet you at 
Thole’s party to-night. You know we are to dine 
at Martin’s at seven thirty sharp.” 

“You bet I will — rath-er,” she laughed. “I hear 
the supper is going to be a wonder even for Thole 
— music and vaudeville stunts and all kinds of added 
features. Here’s the elevator — aw revoir till seven 
thirty.” 

This party of Thole’s had been the talk of the 
particular set in which he moved for many days. It 
so happened that two musical comedies were to have 
their New York opening on the same night, and the 
supper was given in honor of the best known of the 
show-girls from both companies. It promised in all 
ways to be a beauty contest of unusual proportions, 
and for a fortnight Thole, as well as Slade and 
Sheldon, had been doing everything which unlimited 
money, with the aid of their past experience, could 
do to make the party worthy of the occasion. That 
none of the guests happened to have speaking parts 
in either of the new productions was of little con- 
90 


THE OCTOPUS 


sequence. A success meant that they would remain 
in town indefinitely, and that was much more im- 
portant in the eyes of these young women than all 
the laurel wreaths ever placed on the brow of a great 
dramatic artist. 

It had been arranged that Fannie Brugiere and 
Lillian Lester were to dine with Thole and Sheldon 
and Slade, and afterward to divide the evening be- 
tween the two new productions. But while the party 
was waiting for Thole at the restaurant, he telephoned 
that he had to go up-town on an unexpected mission 
and would meet them later at the theatre or at his 
rooms before the supper-party. These four, having 
dined and seen the first act of one musical comedy 
and the second act of the other, hurried to Thole’s 
apartment to be sure that all was in readiness for 
the supper. The walls of the library and the dining- 
room had been draped from the ceiling to the floor 
with smilax, and through these dark-green curtains 
of foliage, filling the room with their faint fragrance, 
many little incandescent lights twinkled like silver 
stars. Fannie Brugiere and Slade were in the din- 
ing-room still discussing some of the minor points 
of the supper with the butler, and Archie and Lillian 
Lester were sitting before the fire in the study wait- 
91 


THE OCTOPUS 


ing for Thole. It was nearly time for the other 
guests to arrive when he hurried in. 

“I’m sorry to be so late,” he explained quickly, 
“but I’ve been having a long rotten evening of it, 
I can tell you.” 

A servant took his overcoat, and he came over to 
the fire and stood with his back to the open hearth. 

Miss Lester, from her low deep chair, smiled up 
at his drawn features and worried eyes. “You must 
have had a bad night of it. You’re a sight, Thole, 
but I must say that your rooms are quite lovely. 
They’re just like the fairy grotto in a pantomime or 
a florist’s shop-window around Easter.” 

Thole looked down at the girl, but his eyes showed 
that he was quite unconscious of what she was say- 
ing to him. Then he turned to Sheldon, and mois- 
tened his dry lips and laced his fingers nervously 
behind his back. “Archie,” he began. “I’m in a 
mess.” 

Miss Lester yawned, and stirred uneasily in her 
chair. “Shall I go out?” she asked. 

Thole continued to look at Sheldon. “Do as you 
want,” he said sharply, and by way of reply Miss 
Lester sank further into the chair and daintily rested 
her yellow satin slippers on the fender. 

92 


THE OCTOPUS 


“I’m in a devil of a mess,” Thole went on, “and, 
Archie, you’ve got to get me out of it.” 

Sheldon nodded and smiled. “I’d be only too 
glad,” he said. 

“Do you remember a Mrs. Steele, who dined with 
us one night at Delmonico’s?” 

“Perfectly — she was quite beautiful.” 

“Well,” Thole continued, “she used to live over 
on Riverside Drive, but just now she has an apart- 
ment at the Marie Antoinette. I’ve seen a good deal 
of her lately, and I like her well enough — in fact, 
in a way she’s very necessary to me just now — and 
for some inane reason she’s taken a notion to me.” 

Miss Lester laughed aloud. “Don’t fool yourself, 
Thole. It’s your money.” 

Thole shook his tall lanky frame, as if to show his 
indifference to the girl’s words, and hurried on. “I 
went up to her place last night to take her to dinner, 
and as usual she kept me waiting. I had some legal 
papers to read, so I went to her desk and looked 
them over, and then did a little calculating. Then 
she came in suddenly, and in my hurry I picked up 
the business papers, but forgot a couple of personal 
letters I’d left lying on her desk. One of these letters 
was from Fannie. She wrote it several days ago, 
93 


THE OCTOPUS 


and she was sore at the time and accused me of a 
lot of things I never did, and to make matters worse 
she had to get affectionate toward the last. It seems 
that the maid found the letter, and was so delighted 
with it that this morning she showed it to Mrs. Steele. 
Fortunately there was no envelope, and the letter 
began with just ‘Dearest 5 or ‘Darling 5 or some foolish 
word, so there was no way of proving the letter was 
meant for me. I had to do something quickly, and 
the only thing I could think of was to tell her that 
it was written to you and that, being a young man 
without much experience, you had brought it to me 
for advice, and that I had taken it along to consider. 
I don’t know whether she really believed me or not, 
but you’ve got to go up there to-morrow morning 
and square me. I said you’d be up about eleven 
o’clock.” 

Sheldon, his lips closed tight, stared into the fire. 
“Just what was in the letter?” he asked at last. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” and then as the thought first 
came to Thole that Archie was hesitating in his 
assent to do his bidding, he looked evenly into the 
young man’s eyes. “I don’t know,” he repeated, 
“and furthermore I don’t care. You will go to the 
Marie Antoinette to-morrow at eleven, and you will 
94 


THE OCTOPUS 


swear that that letter was intended for you, and if 
it’s necessary you will stand for everything of which 
Fannie accused me. Now I hope you have that 
straight. I probably won’t have a chance to speak 
to you about it again to-night. I’m going now to 
see about the supper. Don’t forget — eleven to-mor- 
row morning.” 

For a few moments Sheldon and Miss Lester sat 
silently looking at the crackling logs, and then the 
girl pulled herself up to the edge of the chair and 
rested her chin between her palms. 

“You aren’t thinking of standing for that, are 
you?” she asked. “I saw Fannie the day she wrote 
that note, and what she said to Thole was probably 
something fierce. Why should you be the goat?” 

Sheldon flushed scarlet, and looked up at the 
pretty pink-and-white face and the flashing eyes. 
“Why should I be the goat?” he repeated. “Because 
— you know as well as I do. Thole isn’t the man 
to be denied anything — he’d fire me.” 

“Well,” the girl said quickly, “suppose he does? 
Then you can start again with a decent firm, even 
if you don’t make the money that Thole gives you. 
It would be worth a lot for you to work with white 
people instead of crooks like him and his shadow 
95 


THE OCTOPUS 


Slade. Promise me you’ll refuse to do this dirty 
trick for him. Won’t you please promise me, 
Archie? Be a man !” 

She held out her hand, and he took it and pressed 
it closely in his own. “I don’t know, Lillie, I don’t 
know yet. It means so very much to me, but I’m 
beginning to understand. Perhaps you’re right ; 
thank you anyhow.” 

From midnight until five o’clock the next morning 
the supper ran its riotous course. A few of the 
guests had retreated in pairs to the study for more 
intimate tete-a-tetes, the vaudeville performers had 
concluded their “turns,” and the members of the band 
had long since slipped away unnoticed. The shaded 
candles of the candelabra in the dining-room had died 
a spluttering death, and some one in a spirit of 
elation had turned on the electric lights. Through 
the orange globes the dull lights from the ceiling 
burned their way through the hot, smoke-laden air 
down to the remaining guests lounging about the 
table. They showed the white necks and shoulders 
and the filmy dresses of the women, the long table — 
a confused litter of tall Venetian glasses, half-filled 
champagne bottles, women’s long white gloves tied 
96 


THE OCTOPUS 


into knots, and everywhere over the white cloth, 
bunches of crushed and withering flowers. At the 
head of the table sat Thole, the butt of a cigar 
gripped between his teeth and his clear eyes and pale 
putty-colored skin a marked contrast to the flushed 
faces of the men and women about him. 

As the clock struck five, Fannie Brugiere, who sat 
at his right, got up, and the rest of the guests ac- 
cepted her action as a signal that the party was at 
an end. They all rose at the same time, and Thole 
had already started with Fannie Brugiere toward 
the door of the study when he half turned to Archie. 
“Don’t forget,” he said, “that you’re to be at the 
Marie Antoinette at eleven.” 

There was something in Sheldon’s look that made 
Thole stop. “You understand that, don’t you?” 
he added. 

For a moment Sheldon looked him evenly in the 
eyes. Then, speaking very deliberately, “I find, Mr. 
Thole, that I can’t keep that engagement. It is 
quite impossible, quite.” 

Thole turned and, walking back to the table, stood 
with his hands resting on the back of his chair. “I 
don’t think I quite understand you. Do you mean 
that you won’t go?” The old man’s voice was very 
97 


THE OCTOPUS 


low, but it had a metallic ring that carried to the 
far corners of the big room, and his guests, who 
had started to leave, stopped suddenly and stared 
in wide-eyed wonder. Archie was conscious that 
Lillian Lester had moved very close to his side, and 
he felt her long soft fingers close tightly over his 
hand, which was resting on the edge of the table. 
Through the smoky air he could see Thole’s eyes 
burning with anger, and then he saw Fannie Bru- 
giere walk toward Thole and put her arm about 
his shoulder as if to protect him. 

Sheldon pulled himself up very straight and, with 
a futile effort to smile, glanced at the scared, silent 
faces about the room, and then he turned back to 
Thole. “I mean,” he said, and his voice sounded to 
him as if some one else were talking a long way off, 
“I mean that I can’t do what you ask. I mean that 
I am done with you, Mr. Thole, you and your dirty 
work forever.” 

Thole’s face went quite white, and his long bony 
fingers clutched at the back of the chair. “You 
cub!” he whispered. “You cur!” 

With her hand still on Thole’s shoulder, Fannie 
Brugiere uttered a half-stifled sob and then suddenly 
leaned far over the table toward Sheldon. 

98 


THE OCTOPUS 


she cried hysterically, “ you refuse anything he asks 
you to do? Why, you can’t refuse.” 

Sheldon shifted his eyes from Thole to those of 
the woman. “Why?” he asked. “Why can’t I 
refuse?” 

“Why? Why, because he’s your father.” 

As the words left her lips Thole swung about on 
her. “How dare you say that?” he whispered. 
“How dare you?” 

For a moment she stepped away from him in 
apparent fear, but her courage returned to her as 
quickly as it had gone. “Why not?” she shouted. 
“Why shouldn’t he know what everybody on Broad- 
way has known for months? Is he so much better 
than the rest of us?” 

Her voice kept on ringing in his ears for a long 
time, and then it seemed to Sheldon that the room 
had become suddenly quite silent, and when he opened 
his eyes again he found that he was still standing in 
the same place with his finger-tips resting on the edge 
of the table. There was no one with him now except 
Lillian Lester, who was standing in the doorway. 
Through the gray-blue tobacco smoke he recognized 
her by her yellow dress, and then as everything be- 
came clearer to him he saw her white shoulders and 
99 


THE OCTOPUS 


bare arms and her pretty fluffy golden hair and her 
blue eyes, which were wet with tears. He saw her 
lips move as if she were trying to say something, 
but no words reached him ; nothing but a woman’s 
sob, and then with her head bowed she went out the 
door, and left him alone. He reached out his hand 
and, picking up a glass filled with champagne, held 
it to his lips until he had drunk it all. After that 
his mind became quite clear again ; he remembered 
everything that had happened and just how it had 
happened, and he threw back his shoulders and started 
to move slowly toward the door which led to the 
study. He knew that he would find Thole waiting 
for him, and that they would be alone. 

Thole was standing before the fireplace, the long, 
lanky figure in black an absurd contrast to the walls 
of delicate, fragrant smilax and the fragile roses 
which surrounded him on every side. Sheldon glanced 
at him, and then crossed the room to one of the high 
French windows that looked out on the deserted park. 
His brain was absolutely clear now, and he was sur- 
prised to find that he felt no anger for Thole, not 
even a mild animus, nothing but contempt and a 
certain kind of pity for the man who had so recently 
controlled him body and soul. The tragedy of the 
100 


THE OCTOPUS 


last few minutes had reversed their positions ; it was 
he who was the master now. 

Thole it was who broke the long silence. “Well,” 
he asked querulously, “have you nothing to say?” 

Sheldon turned from the window and looked at 
the gaunt figure before the fireplace. There was no 
longer any fire in Thole’s eyes, and his whole frame 
seemed to sag from head to foot ; for the moment 
the old spirit had quite gone out of him. 

“I don’t think I have anything to say,” Sheldon 
said. “I don’t believe that there is anything to be 
said or to be done. It’s finished.” 

Thole shifted his feet uneasily and turned the now 
mild gray eyes toward his son. “You are going 
back to — to her?” 

“Of course. What else is there for me to do, now 
that I know how much she needs me?” 

Thole nodded. “Of course,” he muttered, “of 
course.” 

“I can at least try to make up in a way,” Sheldon 
went on, “for all that she has suffered from you. 
That will be something worth while anyhow — cer- 
tainly better than to remain here as you must remain, 
discredited by men and a joke among the women you 
call your friends.” 


101 


THE OCTOPUS 


“I wish you’d sit down a minute,” Thole said dog- 
gedly. “I’ve got to tell you this before you go. 
I’ve got to tell you, because I’d rather and, perhaps, 
you’d rather hear it from me than from her.” 

Sheldon sat on the arm of a big leather chair and, 
by way of assent, shrugged his shoulders. 

Once more Thole shifted his feet uneasily and be- 
gan: “I first knew your mother not very long after 
her husband’s death. You mayn’t know it, but he’d 
never treated her particularly well, and when he 
died he left her destitute, penniless, and she was very 
lonely. Then I came along, and we were together 
a great deal. I’d come from up state, and I didn’t 
know many people, and the only trouble was that 
almost as soon as I started in I began to make 
money. The game was a good deal easier then than 
it is now. I guess she must have been fond of me 
and sort of proud of my success, and it was always 
understood that we were going to be married, and 
then when the time came that I should have made 
good I didn’t do it. I’d begun to get the fever for 
money and the power that money brings, and I sup- 
pose I was just money-mad like so many people get 
in New York. I was afraid that a wife and a family 
would interfere with my plans and interfere in my 
102 


THE OCTOPUS 


success; of course it would probably have been the 
making of me, but I couldn’t see it that way then. 
I was just a common, selfish brute, with an unlimited 
greed for money, and ready to tramp down anything 
that stood in my way of getting it. That was just 
about the way of it, and even when you were born, I 
couldn’t do the decent thing. It was a little after 
that that your mother moved to Dunham, where no 
one knew her or anything about her, and where there 
was no reason for any one to believe that you were 
not her husband’s child.” 

Sheldon stood up, and for a few moments Thole’s 
eyes followed the younger man in silence as he paced 
slowly up and down the room. Then in the same 
dogged voice he went on again: 

“I’m not trying to excuse myself — I deserted her 
all right, and I guess I got my punishment. As you 
say, you can go back to her, and as you say, too, 
I’ve got to stay on here, discredited and a joke, 
and believe me, so long as I live, I won’t forget that 
it was my own son who said that to me. You got 
your revenge right there. There’s never been a day 
for the last twenty years — and you can believe it or 
not, but it’s God’s truth — when I wouldn’t have gone 
back to her. But she wasn’t like any other woman 
103 


THE OCTOPUS 


I ever knew. From the day I told her I couldn’t 
or wouldn’t marry her she’s never spoken to me or 
let me see her. And what hurt most was that she 
wouldn’t let me do anything to help her. She re- 
turned the drafts I sent her, and after a while she 
sent back my letters unopened. I — ” Thole stopped 
suddenly and slowly pressed one clenched hand into 
the open palm of the other. “I guess that’s all,” he 
added impotently. “She’s suffered and I’ve suffered, 
and now it looks as if you were to get yours. I 
tell you it’s the call of this big rotten town. She 
heard it and I heard it, and then it came your turn. 
That’s the way of it — I’ve watched ’em for a good 
many years, the young men and the young women 
from the little towns coming here to fight New York 
with their puny bodies and their puny brains. I’ve 
watched ’em by the dozens flounder about for a 
while and then sink and not leave enough for a de- 
cent funeral.” 

Sheldon stopped pacing up and down the room 
and turning suddenly faced his father. “Is that 
all?” he asked brusquely. 

The older man drew back as if the boy had struck 
him. “Why, yes, Archie,” he said, “I guess that’s 
all. You mean you’re going now?” 

104 


THE OCTOPUS 


“Yes.” 

“And there’s nothing I can do?” Thole asked. 

“Nothing, thank God. I only wish that there 
was something I could do or say to make you suffer 
as you have made me suffer.” 

The hard grim features of Thole relaxed into some- 
thing that resembled a smile. “My boy — Archie,” 
he said, and his voice had suddenly become very low, 
even gentle, “if you were older and if you had ever 
had a son of your own, you wouldn’t worry about 
how you could hurt me. You would understand that 
all you had to do was just what you are doing now 
— walking out of this room for the last time without 
even giving me your hand or saying good-by.” 

Thole waited until he had heard the outer door 
close on his son for the last time, and then it suddenly 
occurred to him that it was very chilly in the room, 
and he turned to find that there was nothing in the 
fireplace but gray ashes. He drew his tall frame 
erect and looked about at the dishevelled room. To 
his eyes the roses appeared faded and unlovely, and 
the curtains of smilax as if they were not real but 
some tawdry device of a scene on the stage. With 
one hand he reached out, and, seizing a few of the 
green fragile strands, tore them from their fasten- 
105 


THE OCTOPUS 


ings, and, throwing them to the floor, crushed them 
under his foot. Moving very slowly, he crossed the 
room to the window. To the east the dawn of the 
new day had streaked the purple sky with long nar- 
row ribbons of gray and pink lights ; down in the 
park the lamps of a taxicab swung in a great arc 
and then disappeared behind a black screen of foli- 
age; to the north he could see the lights twinkling 
in the upper story of a building that rose high above 
the trees; but to the eyes of Thole the city lay be- 
fore him, a great sleeping octopus, its unclean body 
calmly resting for the work of the coming day. If 
there was anything of beauty there he, at least, had 
failed to find it; for had it not this night, in spite 
of all his money and his power, taken from him 
his one last chance of happiness? And then it came 
to him that in a few hours the battle would be on 
again, and that he must have sleep, because he would 
have to be in his place and ready. And, so, he turned 
from the window and the sleeping city and, with slow, 
unsteady steps, moved toward his own room. 


106 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


DAVID PRINDLE gathered up his change and his 
monthly commutation ticket and, through the grated 
window, smiled at the station agent. David said: 
“A fine morning for the first of December,” but the 
thought in his mind was : “I have now in my pocket 
two dollars, and this added to the seventy dollars 
I have in bank will not pay the monthly bills, and I 
wonder which of the monthly bills I can best leave 
unpaid.” 

For five years now, on the first day of every 
month, Prindle had been facing the same question, 
whether it was better to rob Peter and pay Paul 
or Pay Peter and let Paul wait. Every morning as 
he sat with his fellow commuters and smoked his pipe 
and tried to read his newspaper his thoughts were 
seldom far afield from the question of the high cost 
of living. The same thoughts usually filled his mind 
on the return trip, but no sooner had he left the 
stuffy, smoke-ridden car than such gloomy reveries 
took instant flight. His head held high, his shoul- 
107 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


ders thrown back, with long, swinging strides he 
swung along the broad country road that led to 
his home. And such a home ! The very first glimpse 
that he caught of the white clapboard farmhouse 
never failed to cause the same old thrill. Evil re- 
flections concerning unpaid bills, the long, dull rou- 
tine of the day’s work, the years of incessant strug- 
gle were forgotten, and the only thoughts that filled 
his tired, overworked brain were of the little house 
hidden among the trees and the figure of the girl 
sure to be waiting for him before the open door. 
That was about all there was in David’s life — this 
one girl and the open door. And so intertwined 
were they in his heart and in his mind that they 
seemed like two happy dreams constantly fading one 
into another, both very distinct and quite insepara- 
ble. For it was in this same farmhouse that David 
and his beloved Angela had begun their married life. 
It was the only home they had ever known together, 
and (with the exception of a new roof and an addi- 
tion which was to contain an oak-panelled library 
and a pink-and-gold bedroom for Angela) it was 
the only home they ever wanted to know. 

For one year David had paid a modest rental, 
but at the end of that time, so satisfied were he and 
108 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


Angela that it was the best home in the world, they 
decided to buy the place outright. Therefore, hav- 
ing carefully counted their capital and such pros- 
pects as the future might have in store for them, 
they called on the agent of the property and briefly 
told him of their heart’s desire. The agent admitted 
that the owner had no possible use for the house 
himself and would no doubt be glad to part with it 
on easy terms. These surmises proved correct, and 
in a week’s time David and Angela once more met 
at the agent’s office to sign the all-important papers. 

The agent sat behind his flat desk, smiled a little 
mysteriously, and with one finger tapped the long, 
red-sealed deeds that lay before him. 

“Mr. Dolliver, whom I represent,” he began, “is 
willing to accede to the terms that you suggest. 
My client, however reluctantly, must insist on one 
condition which it is quite possible may deter you 
from buying the property.” 

David and Angela exchanged swift, unhappy 
glances, and then David nodded for the lawyer to 
continue. 

“The original owner of the house, one Abraham 
Enright, decreed in his will that so long as the house 
lasted the eldest male member of the family of En- 
109 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


right should always have the privilege of occupying 
a certain room for so long a period as he saw fit. 
That was a long time ago — at least three generations 
— and although the property has changed hands sev- 
eral times that same clause has always appeared in 
the deed. The eldest living descendant of Abraham 
Enright, if there is one, still has the right to occupy 
that room. I believe it is the one at the northern 
end of the house on the second floor.” 

“Then, as I understand it,” said David, “although 
we own the house we are liable at any time to have 
a stranger wander in and settle down in our only 
spare room, and perhaps stay there until he dies?” 

“Exactly,” said the agent. “But I think it is only 
fair to say that since the condition was first made 
no one, so far as is known, has ever taken advantage 
of the privilege.” 

For a few tense moments David alternately turned 
his glance from the keen, smiling eyes of the lawyer 
to the deeds, and then back to the lawyer. 

“Do you not think,” he suggested, “if I saw your 
client and explained how ” 

“Not a chance in the world,” the lawyer inter- 
rupted. “To be quite frank with you, I don’t be- 
lieve he cares very much whether he sells the property 
110 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


or not. Personally, and I speak from a long expe- 
rience, I consider the terms, in spite of this unusual 
condition, very favorable to you.” 

David glanced at Angela and saw tears slowly 
ebbing into the eyes that he loved the best in all 
the world. Without another word he reached for 
the deeds and quickly seized the pen the lawyer prof- 
fered him. Even with less hesitation Angela affixed 
her signature, and the little farmhouse, with the ex- 
ception of its one absurd and annoying condition, 
was their very own. 

When David and Angela had once more returned 
home they spent the evening in speculating on the 
probable personality, condition of life, and habits of 
the stranger who at any moment might demand a 
place in their household. The name of the creator 
of the unhappy condition was as unknown to them 
as was that of the present head of the house of 
Enright. They speculated about him that particu- 
lar night and for the next five years, with occasional 
brief lapses, they continued to speculate about him. 
The oldest living inhabitant of the neighborhood 
could not remember an Abraham Enright and where 
he had gone and who were his heirs no one knew. 
But to David and Angela the present heir was a very 
111 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


real person and a distinct menace to their lives. Dur- 
ing the five years of speculation their composite 
guesses had assumed the form and character of a 
real individual. According to this gradually con- 
ceived idea the mysterious stranger who was legally 
entitled to upset their lives was a rather elderly 
person with few humane or kindly instincts. Also, 
although David and Angela always referred to him 
as “the family skeleton,” he was very short and 
stout, had a stubby, iron-gray beard and a most 
ungovernable temper. This in their hours of depres- 
sion was the ogre they always saw. They pictured 
the roly-poly form stumping up the road; they saw 
him standing in the doorway gruffly demanding en- 
trance; and they saw him in their one spare bed- 
room — irritable, gouty, and, with his meagre, un- 
couth belongings, settled there for life. It was for 
the latter reason, perhaps, that of all the little home 
the spare room alone failed to grow in beauty and 
comfort. A typical farmhouse bedroom, cold, gray, 
and cheerless they had found it, and cold, gray, and 
cheerless Angela and David had allowed it to remain. 
It .was as if they had prepared a vault to receive 
the remains of all their happiest and most cherished 
hopes. 


112 


GOD’S MATERIAL 

However, apart from the always expected visit 
from the unwelcome guest, Angela and David had 
known five years of well-nigh perfect content. It is 
true that to keep the place in proper repair, to add 
to its simple comforts, to make Angela’s flower-gar- 
den worthy of its lovely mistress had been no easy 
task, and had been accomplished not without many 
unmentioned deeds of sacrifice and privation. For 
ten years David had worked hard and faithfully for 
the company with whom he had found his first em- 
ployment, but, fortunately or unfortunately, David 
had been born with a nature which contained sweet- 
ness and kindliness out of all proportion to aggres- 
siveness or business acumen. Therefore, as is the 
usual fate of such personalities, he had become but 
a human cog in a great human wheel that with each 
revolution ground out many dollars for its owners. 
For ten years David had served his masters well and 
just as far as he was allowed to serve them, and, 
then, when he had reached the office on the morning 
of that first day of December, he found the place 
filled with whispered rumors that chilled the hearts 
of the human cogs. Big Business had laid its steel 
hand on the wheel of human cogs and hereafter it 
was to play but a minor part in a really great ma- 
113 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


chine. David and all the other human cogs knew 
that Big Business brought with it sons and nephews 
and cousins, all of whom must have jobs, and, late 
that same afternoon, the fears of David, at least, 
proved correct. 

With a heavy heart he alighted from the train 
and with feet of lead he started to plod wearily over 
the brittle, frozen roads to his home. After ten long 
years! But the thought that was uppermost in 
David’s mind was not one of reproach against the 
company but against himself. Human cogs of ten 
years’ standing could not easily find new positions, 
and David knew this as well as he knew that with 
all the needs of his home pressing upon him he had 
been unable to lay by. During the period of their 
married life David had held no secret from his wife, 
and now, more than ever before, he needed the help 
of her love and of her fine, young courage. They 
sat down before the wood fire in the little sitting- 
room, and with no word of bitterness David told the 
tragedy that had come into their lives. After he had 
finished the two lovers sat in silence. Gazing into 
the crackling fire, her chin resting in the palm of 
one hand, Angela stretched out her other hand until 
it lay in that of her husband. For a few moments 
114 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


they remained thus, and then, suddenly, they were 
aroused from their unhappy reveries by the inces- 
sant tooting of an automobile horn, evidently clam- 
oring for admission at their garden gate. 

“Delmonico’s,” said Johnny Enright to his chauf- 
fer, and, with a dolorous sigh of discontent, fell back 
into the deep-cushioned seat of his limousine. To 
be whisked away in such a gorgeous, purple-lined 
chariot to a banquet at Delmonico’s might have 
brought a smile of anticipatory pleasure to some 
young men, but not to Johnny Enright. Had it 
been a dinner with a few congenial friends, that 
would have been a very different matter, but of all 
the chores that his business life very occasionally 
forced upon him, the annual banquet given to the 
big men in his employ bored him the most. He hated 
the dinner with its innumerable courses, he hated 
the ostentatious souvenirs, the long-winded speeches, 
and, most of all, he hated the speech that he himself 
had to make. Had it not been for the latter he 
could at least have partially forgotten his dislike of 
the occasion by indulging in large libations of cham- 
pagne. But as vice-president and the practical 
owner of the Universal Milk Company it was neces- 
115 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


sarj for him to appear at his very best when the 
time came for him to address the officers and the dis- 
trict managers of that eminently successful concern. 

The banquet itself proved to be very much like 
every other banquet, whether the price is five dollars 
a plate or five times that amount. The dinner proper 
once over, the old gentlemen at the speakers’ table, 
one by one, arose and gravely threw verbal bouquets 
at every one present, including themselves. Johnny 
sat between two of these elderly, bearded persons 
and dreamily wondered whether he would spend the 
next day in town or go to Rye to play golf. And 
then he was suddenly aroused from his revery by a 
sudden break in the oratory which at least to En- 
right seemed to have been rumbling on for hours. 
A little way down the table a young man with a 
Henry Clay face and a rarely sympathetic voice was 
telling his elders something of the worth of Abraham 
Enright, whose sagacity and high principles had 
brought the Universal Milk Company into being and 
to whom every man present owed a debt of gratitude 
that none could ever hope to pay. From Abraham 
Enright the young and convincing orator passed to 
his son, John Enright, and, having properly crowned 
him with laurel, proceeded to decorate the present 
116 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


head of the house in a similar manner. With a 
flushed face and downcast eyes Johnny heard himself 
credited with a list of virtues to not one of which 
could he possibly lay claim. A few minutes later, 
confused and still blushing, Johnny himself arose and 
heartily thanked the young man for mentioning all 
the things that he should be and wasn’t, but prom- 
ised faithfully that the hint should not go unheeded. 
To his great relief the banquet came to a fairly early 
end, the mass of black coats and white shirt-fronts 
at last arose, disintegrated, and finally disappeared. 
With a huge sigh Johnny hustled into a fur coat, 
and, with all possible despatch, started for the near- 
est cabaret. 

It was early afternoon on the following day when 
Enright awoke from a heavy sleep and rang for his 
servant. The strain of remaining respectable during 
the long banquet had been too much for him, and 
to make up for it he had one-stepped and fox-trotted 
and supped at the cabaret until the new day was 
well on its way. His first half-crystallized thought 
was of the beautiful young butterfly with whom he 
had danced away the early morning hours, and then 
his mind suddenly reverted to the boy orator with 
the Henry Clay face who had so glowingly described 
117 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


the great and good work of the three generations 
of Enrights. Perhaps the youthful district manager 
had said what he said because he believed it, or per- 
haps he thought that it would help him with the 
officers of the company and bring him instant prefer- 
ment, but, whatever his intention, there could be no 
doubt that his words had sunk deep into the guilty, 
joyous soul of Johnny Enright. 

For some time Enright lay gazing up at the ceil- 
ing, listening to his servant moving stealthily about 
the room, and then he cast a guilty glance at the 
clock. To his further chagrin he found that it was 
nearly half-past three. Of course, it was too late 
for golf, and, as he had no dinner engagement, a 
long, dull afternoon and night in town faced him 
ominously. He was thoroughly discouraged at the 
outlook and he was more discouraged about himself. 
The words of the district manager orator returned 
to taunt him and upbraid him for not having lived 
the fine, useful life that his father and grandfather 
had lived instead of that of the pampered son of 
a multimillionnaire — a waster. And then, as he still 
lay gazing up at the ceiling, but now quite wide- 
awake, there came to his mind a talk he had had 
with his father just before the old man had died. 

118 



Confused and still blushing, Johnny heartily thanked the 
young man. 










GOD’S MATERIAL 


The conversation that he now recalled so vividly 
seemed to fit in most curiously with the district 
manager’s speech as well as his gloomy views con- 
cerning his own present worthless existence. 

They had been sitting together in his father’s study 
and the gist of the old man’s words was this : 

“To-day, my son, I have made you my sole heir, 
but, for certain reasons, there is one bequest I did 
not mention in my will. Your grandfather began 
life as a plain farmer. He was born and brought up 
on a little place that was known as The Oaks, near 
a town called Millbrook, in Jersey. As a boy he 
worked on the farm, and among his other chores he 
drove the cows to and from the pasture and milked 
them. Long before he died he established one of the 
biggest milk concerns this or any other country has 
ever known. When he was successful he moved to 
New York, but in a way he held on to the farm 
at Millbrook. He practically gave the place over 
to an old farmer and his wife, but he always retained 
the privilege of spending a night there whenever he 
saw fit. And, in spite of his town house and the big 
place he built afterward at Elberon, he frequently 
availed himself of the privilege. He contended that 
one night at the old farm not only did his nerves a 
119 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


world of good but kept his relative values straight. 
If the money came in a little too fast he would run 
down and have a look at the old cow pasture and the 
barnyard where he had worked as a barefooted boy. 
And when he felt that his power was getting the 
better of his heart and his common sense he would 
spend a night in his old whitewashed room at the 
farm, sleep on a corn-husk mattress, and go back to 
town chastened and ready to help others who hadn’t 
had his luck or his talent for success. When your 
grandfather died he left the old place to the farmer 
wha had looked after it for him, but it was stipulated 
in the deed that the oldest male member of his family 
should always have the right to occupy his bedroom.” 

“And did you ever take advantage of the privi- 
lege?” Johnny asked. 

“Not exactly,” said Johnny’s father. “The place 
had changed hands before I grew old enough and 
wise enough to feel the need of it. But several times 
I ran down there and looked at the farm where 
father had made his start, and I must say it always 
helped me over some hard place. Do as you feel 
best about it, my boy, but the privilege of spending 
a night, or as many nights as you choose, in the old 
house is yours, and I’m pretty sure that some of 
120 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


these days it might do you good to take advantage 
of it.” 

For the first time Johnny was old enough and 
wise enough to understand what his father’s words 
had meant and his mind was already made up. Jump- 
ing out of bed, he ordered his chauffeur to report at 
once with his touring-car, told his servant to pack 
his bag for one night, and then proceeded to com- 
plete his hasty toilet. Half an hour later he was in 
his big gray touring-car, alone, and driving it toward 
the Fort Lee ferry as fast as the speed laws would 
permit. It was a fine, crisp December day, and the 
clear, sharp air of the North River made his blood 
tingle and drove away every vestige of the unhappy 
effects of the last long, hard night. The farther he 
went, the more times he lost his way, the more broadly 
did Johnny Enright smile at his adventure. It was 
already dark; he was soon to knock at the door of 
a house he had never seen and demand a night’s lodg- 
ing of people of whose names he was even ignorant. 
His mind, now alert and keen, fairly thrilled at the 
idea, and he compared himself to the imaginative 
heroes of the “Arabian Nights.” The latter thought 
it was, no doubt, that made him decide to emulate the 
adventurers of the fiction of the Far East and pre- 
121 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


sent himself to his unknown hosts under an assumed 
name. Then, later, when they had rudely refused 
him admission, he would dramatically declare his true 
identity. Who, indeed, should say now that Johnny 
Enright was without imagination or that there was 
no longer the spirit of adventure throughout the 
land! 

Thus it was, when David left Angela by the fire 
and went out to his front gate, the young man in 
the gray car introduced himself as Mr. Brown- Jones. 
The stranger also admitted that he had lost his way 
and was thoroughly chilled after his long ride. Ten 
minutes later Mr. Brown- Jones was before the Prin- 
dle fireplace and, with its help and that of a hot 
whiskey toddy that Angela had brewed for him, was 
gradually being thawed into a state of genial warmth. 
When, still later, Mr. Brown- Jones suggested that 
he continue on his way, Angela and David only 
laughed at the idea, and both of them insisted on 
accompanying him to the spare bedchamber to be 
sure that everything that could be done was done 
for the unexpected guest. 

“We always have it ready,” said David as he 
lighted the candle that stood before the sadly tar- 
122 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


nished mirror. “We’ve been expecting a guest these 
five years.” 

“A long wait,” said Mr. Brown- Jones. “You must 
have been looking forward to his coming with much 
pleasure.” 

David looked at Angela and smiled. “Hardly 
that, Mr. Brown- Jones,” he said. “But it’s a long 
story, and I’ll tell you at dinner.” 

David not only told the story at dinner, but he 
told of all of his and Angela’s fears as to the com- 
ing of this Enright — the ogre who might legally set- 
tle down on them, bag and baggage, for the rest of 
his days, and put an end to all their happiness. And 
then, while Angela talked, David wondered, now that 
he had lost his job, if there was to be any more 
happiness. Johnny Enright, alias Brown- Jones, 
smiled pleasantly at Angela as she chatted on, but 
he really heard nothing of what she said. For he, 
too, was wondering — wondering that any two peo- 
ple could find so much happiness in the world as these 
two babes in the wood on whom, by some curious 
whim of fate, he had so unexpectedly stumbled. After 
dinner, indeed until far into the night, they sat about 
the fire and, as the hours grew, so grew the confi- 
dence in each other of these three new friends. There 
123 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


was something so genial and gay, a certain human 
warmth about Mr. Brown- Jones, that, to Angela 
and David, it seemed to permeate the whole room 
and completely envelop their minds and hearts. So 
intimate became the talk that David even confided 
to the stranger the dream of the new wing which 
was to contain the oak-panelled library and the pink- 
and-gold bedroom for Angela. And then, when it 
was very late, and without knowing exactly why or 
how, David told of the great tragedy that had be- 
fallen them that very day. But, although the stranger 
spoke words of sympathy, David, and Angela, too, 
were a little hurt to note how lightly he regarded 
the loss of a job. Indeed, in the very midst of 
David’s tale of woe, Mr. Brown- Jones clasped his 
hands over his stomach, gazed fixedly at the rafters, 
and smiled as if a new and beautiful idea had just 
entered his good-looking head. 

Angela and David were up and about early the 
next morning, but not so early as the stranger, whom 
they found wandering happily about the barnyard. 

“Never have I felt so refreshed,” said Mr. Brown- 
Jones. “That room of yours is a tonic — almost an 
inspiration. It has given even me a whole lot of 
ideas.” 


124 



Mr. Brown -Jones smiled as if a new and beautiful idea had 
just entered his good-looking head. 




GOD’S MATERIAL 


It was at breakfast that Enright disclosed his iden- 
tity and told them of the ideas. 

“Down at Norfolk,” he said, “I’ve got a house- 
boat waiting for me. It’s a bit of a tub, but rather 
comfortable. We’ll drift down the canals to Florida, 
and play golf at Saint Augustine and roulette at 
Palm Beach. And then, if the notion seizes us, we 
can go to New Orleans for the carnival and a dinner 
at Jules’s, or we can run over to Havana for some 
good green cigars. What do you say? — I’ll even 
promise to have you back in time for Angela to do 
her spring planting. And, in addition to the garden- 
ing it will then be high time for David and I to begin 
our real life’s work with the Universal Milk Com- 
pany. The company mayn’t know that, but we know 
it.” 

At the moment neither Angela nor David gave an 
answer; in fact, they never did give an answer in 
words. David tried to say something, but it was a 
rather sorry effort, and Angela, suddenly jumping 
up from the table, ran to her bedroom, from which 
she later returned with a nose much bepowdered. 

True to his word, Enright brought them back just 
as the first crocus in Angela’s garden poked its head 
into the warm spring sunshine. A few months of 
125 


GOD’S MATERIAL 


luxurious ease had in no way dimmed their love for 
the little farmhouse. As they turned the bend in 
the road and caught the first glimpse of it there was 
still the same thrill. The same old home — and yet, 
as they drew nearer, they found it was not quite the 
same. Evidently the fairies had been at work over- 
night, for there it was — the new wing. On close in- 
spection they found the oak-panelled library, just 
as it had appeared in David’s dreams, and a 
pink-and-gold bedroom — almost as exquisite in its 
loveliness as the loveliness of Angela herself. Every- 
where, as they ran through the house like two laugh- 
ing children, they found new treasures — treasures 
devised and created by the clever architect and the 
cleverer lady decorator, both of whom served under 
the golden wand of Johnny Enright. Everywhere 
they found something new to admire and to wonder 
at — everywhere except in one room, which they found 
just as they had left it. The golden wand of Johnny 
Enright had spared that one room. There it was, 
cold, gray, uncompromising — a hard-bound legacy, 
a reminder of other, simpler days. 


126 


THE JOY OF DYING 


MERCITA HOBBS dropped the evening paper on 
her lap, clasped her hands behind her head and stared 
steadily at the freshly calsimined ceiling. 

“That sounds like a wonderful white sale at Dobey’s 
to-morrow,” she said. “One ought to pick up some 
real bargains — that is if the advertisement doesn’t 
lie. They claim to have some combinations for 
three-twenty-five marked down ” 

Rather vague as to just what his wife had been 
saying, Hobbs appeared from behind Dillon’s rival 
evening paper and in a dazed way glanced across the 
centre-table. 

“Yes, of course,” he stammered, “combinations. 
Cheap, eh?” 

Without removing her eyes from the ceiling Mer- 
cita’s pretty lips puckered and then wavered into 
a mirthless, almost cynical smile. 

“I can remember, Bexley, dear,” she cooed, “when 
you were rather keen about lingerie for your little 
wifey. But that was six long months ago — six long 
months.” 


127 


THE JOY OF DYING 


“Six very short months I should say,” Hobbs 
temporized with a rather feeble effort at gallantry. 
“If I am not very enthusiastic about white sales or 
any other kind of sales just now, my dear, you know 
the reason. Our income is unfortunately a fixed 
quantity and we have been living a trifle beyond it. 
The calculations I made before our wedding, now 
that they have been put to a practical test, have not 
quite worked out, that’s all. A little economy for 
a few months and by the early summer we shall be 
all square again. Why, only this evening, on my 
way home, I saw some plaid ties in Kendrick’s window 
marked down to twenty-five cents. In my bachelor 
days I should have bought several without a moment’s 
thought, but the fact that I couldn’t buy them now 
didn’t worry me at all. Not a bit of it. I said to 
myself, ‘Bexley,’ said I, ‘your old ties are good 
enough. And what if you can’t take a few plaid ties 
home with you? Haven’t you got the prettiest and 
the brightest wife in the town of Dillon waiting 
there for you?’ Now that’s the way you ought to 
feel about advertisements of white sales and — and 
things.” 

From her youth Mercita had been an omnivorous 
reader of all kinds of literature and had been born 
128 


THE JOY OF DYING 


with an unusually retentive memory as well as a voice 
that was not only sweet and melodious but particu- 
larly well adapted to declamation. Under the cir- 
cumstances it was quite natural that during an argu- 
ment or even ordinary conversation she should quote 
freely from the classic authors. On this particular 
occasion her somewhat emotional mind turned to 
Stevenson’s “Markheim,” and, without vouchsafing 
a glance toward her husband, she delivered the fol- 
lowing quotation directly at the ceiling. “If I be 
condemned to evil acts there is still one door of free- 
dom open — I can cease from action. If my life be 
an ill thing I can. lay it down. Though I be, as you 
say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I 
can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond 
the reach of all.” 

Hobbs put his hand before his mouth and giggled 
audibly. Then he went over to the hearth, and, with 
his hands clasped behind his back, stood before the 
coal-grate fire and through his gold-rimmed eye- 
glasses beamed down pleasantly on his wife. 

“That’s a cheerful little thing,” he said with a 
somewhat conscious chuckle. “Cute idea of yours, 
my dear, to take your life because you can’t afford 
a suit of new underwear.” 


129 


THE JOY OF DYING 


Mrs. Hobbs turned her eyes from the ceiling to the 
weak, smiling face and the short, stooping figure of 
her husband and then back again to the ceiling. 

“What matters the excuse,” she said gravely, 
“so long as one’s conscience is satisfied with the 
cause?” 

The mother of Mrs. Hobbs had been conspicuous 
in clubs, a leader in the expression of all of women’s 
most advanced and broadest views, and Mercita had 
inherited the greater part of her parent’s somewhat 
advanced theories. 

“I don’t see what the cause has got to do with it,” 
Hobbs said frankly perplexed at his wife’s rather 
enigmatical speech. “Suicide is suicide and suicide 
is always wrong. It’s criminal. If you try it and 
don’t get away with it they can lock you up.” 

“They can in New York,” Mercita corrected her 
husband with just the suggestion of a sneer. “They 
can’t in this or any of the more enlightened states of 
the Middle West.” 

Mercita had a way of correcting her husband with 
statements the truthfulness of which his training 
which had been more commercial than general did 
not qualify him to question. Therefore, partly as 
a compliment to her superior education and partly 
130 


THE JOY OF DYING 


to hide his own ignorance, he usually accepted what 
she said as final. But the idea of treating suicide 
so lightly he found most difficult to pass by without 
another word of protest. Self-destruction had al- 
ways appealed to him as the act of a helpless coward 
or a lunatic and as a subject fit for discussion only 
among doctors and criminologists. 

“All right,” he said with a considerable show of 
feeling, “you may be right about the state laws on 
the subject but you must admit that the body of a 
suicide can’t be buried in any first-class Christian 
cemetery. And in the Catholic Church — ” 

“A barbaric tradition of religions,” his wife in- 
terrupted, “that is crumbling as fast as the religions 
are themselves. The old-time fear that the suicide 
once had for the punishment hereafter is now a buga- 
boo only fit to scare old men and children with. To 
prove that I’m right all you’ve got to do is to look 
up the statistics and see how steadily the cases of 
suicide have kept step with the advancement of educa- 
tion, and this advancement means the promotion of 
materialism and the happily growing disbelief in all 
things supernatural, especially this book of fairy 
tales called the Bible.” 

As Mercita fairly hurled her words at him Hobbs 
131 


THE JOY OF DYING 

remained silent, impotently locking and unlocking 
his fingers behind his back. It was as if she were 
pounding him in the face with her fists. In the days 
of his courtship he had always regretted that Mer- 
cita so seldom went to church with him; after their 
marriage he was sorry to find that she did not say 
her prayers, but his religion had always been some- 
thing too sacred to him, too near his heart, for him 
to discuss with any one, and, heretofore, she, on her 
part, had respected his feelings by avoiding the sub- 
ject. But now she was wantonly defaming his belief 
and actually upholding the crime of suicide as a 
decent and respectable act. The walls of the house 
that he had built after so much effort and with so 
much care were crumbling about his head, and his 
dull, slow-plodding brain saw no way to prevent the 
total destruction of his home. Even had he had the 
temerity to refute his wife’s words he would not have 
done so. Imperious, cruel as she might be, his whole 
heart was filled with his great love for her, and his 
innate chivalry for women alone held his tongue in 
leash. Therefore, with no further words but a clumsy 
effort at a bow which was supposed to interpret his 
injured dignity, he went out into the hallway, put 
on his hat and overcoat, and left the house. 

132 


THE JOY OF DYING 

It was a cool, pleasant evening in late February. 
Light, gray clouds floated leisurely across a whitish- 
silver moon and an occasional star peeped down on 
the deserted avenue lined with its rows of leafless 
poplars and semi-detached villas. With his usual 
regard for health, Hobbs buttoned his overcoat 
tightly over his chest and, thrusting his gloved hands 
deep in his pockets, started to walk slowly in the 
direction toward which his feet unconsciously led 
him. It was quite the most unhappy promenade on 
which he had ever set forth, and the saddest part 
of it was that Hobbs himself thoroughly realized 
that however far the walk and his thoughts might 
take him conditions so far as he was concerned would 
remain absolutely unchanged. As chief clerk in one 
of the leading hardware stores of the town he was 
sure of a certain income, but the firm was old-fash- 
ioned and conservative, satisfied with its present 
profits, and so long as there was no perceptible in- 
crease in the profits there would surely be none in 
Hobbs’s salary. He had no other sources of income 
and his wife had spent the last cent of her patrimony 
on her trousseau. Indeed it was her penniless con- 
dition to which the town of Dillon attributed the 
willingness of so pretty and intelligent a girl as 
133 


THE JOY OF DYING 


Mercita to marry so dull although eminently re- 
spectable a young man as Bexley Hobbs. 

Ever since their marriage Hobbs’s financial plans 
had gone wrong. His figures as to the rent, electric- 
light, telephone, interest on his life insurance policy, 
had all proved correct, but almost every other item 
of expense had far exceeded his most liberal calcula- 
tions. The reserve fund which he had stored up 
against possible illness or some unforeseen calamity 
had long since been swept away and he was already 
in debt to several of the tradespeople. Of late he 
had practised the most rigid economy, but Mercita 
who neither understood nor cared for the details of 
housekeeping had done very little to lighten his 
burden. That his wife should care for pretty clothes 
and the things dear to all women’s hearts Hobbs 
admitted to be natural and fair, but that she should 
express her rage over the lack of money to buy a 
new hat or a suit of underwear by attacking the 
Christian religion or threatening to commit suicide 
appealed to him as neither the one nor the other. 
The idea that Mercita should for one moment ever 
think of taking her life was of course too absurd 
for Hobbs to consider, and he decided to dismiss it 
from his mind for all time. 

134 


THE JOY OF DYING 


He hastened his lagging steps, and, in the effort 
to enliven his thoughts, tried to whistle a tune and 
glanced up at the fleecy clouds chasing each other 
across the moon. But try as he might he found it 
difficult to divert his thoughts from Mercita and her 
troubles. When she had complained that her trous- 
seau was worn out Hobbs freely admitted to himself 
that she was no doubt right. Also, she was perfectly 
correct when she contended that since her marriage 
the young men of Dillon no longer asked her to 
dances and to the theatre. Now they left that pleas- 
ure to her husband and her husband did not avail 
himself of that pleasure. That Hobbs had not the 
money available for such luxuries did not alter the 
fact that it was Mercita’s marriage to him that 
had deprived her of them. 

Once more Hobbs quickened his pace and tried to 
interest himself in the beauty of the heavens, but he 
found himself reluctantly admitting that for the last 
two months Mercita and he had spent every evening 
at their own fireside, and that from this or for some 
other cause his wife had been constantly growing 
irritable and dissatisfied. Not only had this spirit 
of discontent grown upon her but of late she had 
135 


THE JOY OF DYING 


often suffered from fits of real depression, and now 
that he gave the matter his serious consideration he 
remembered that she had lost much of her former 
brilliant coloring and had frequently looked decidedly 
pale and wan. Unconsciously Hobbs came to a 
sudden halt, and, in a confused way having stared 
about him, found that he had walked a good half-mile 
from his home. Sharply he turned and started to 
retrace his steps. 

Again he tried to whistle and to fill his mind with 
pleasant, hopeful thoughts of the spring when he 
would have paid his debts and would be in a position 
to give Mercita some new clothes and a few jolly 
outings. But such happy thoughts were wholly 
forced and his disturbed mind cast them out and once 
more raced back to Mercita. Of course even in her 
unenviable and discontented condition she would not 
consider suicide, but Hobbs could not help regret- 
ting that any woman so emotional as his wife should 
hold the crime of suicide so lightly, indeed should 
regard the act as no crime at all. From a quick 
walk he broke into a trot. 

Exactly why he should make such haste to reach 
his home Hobbs in his breathless, excited state would 
not have admitted to himself, even could he have done 
136 


THE JOY OF DYING 


so. But the seed of fear, the dread of oncoming 
disaster and disgrace had been planted in his heart, 
and now that his cottage was in sight he fairly flew 
along the hard clay path. A few minutes later Mer- 
cita heard the front door thrown back and saw her 
husband suddenly appear before her at the sitting- 
room door. He was quite breathless and when he 
saw her sitting calmly by the centre-table she noticed 
the curious look of joy that flamed up in his wide- 
open eyes. He gave a quick sigh, and, for a moment, 
leaned heavily against the door-frame. 

“Bexley,” Mercita demanded, “what is the matter 
with you? Have you seen a ghost or have you been 
training for the Y. M. C. A. sports? My dear, 
you’re a sight.” 

By way of answer to his wife’s pleasantries Hobbs 
smiled weakly at her and then pulling himself to- 
gether went back to the hallway and hung up his hat 
and coat. 

With no conspicuous change, life at the Hobbs’s 
cottage drifted on as before. Hobbs spent his days 
at the store and Mercita read and occasionally at- 
tended a meeting of some society devoted to the 
advancement of women. At night, after supper, they 
read the local evening papers and played cards, 
137 


THE JOY OF DYING 


sometimes by themselves and sometimes with neigh- 
bors who had dropped in for the evening. Mercita 
grew a trifle more pale, at least Hobbs thought she 
did. That she became more dissatisfied and despond- 
ent and that Hobbs was more worried and solicitous 
about his wife there could Jbe no question whatever. 
Two weeks after the night that Mercita had first 
expressed her views on suicide she went to see a friend 
who was lying ill at a hospital. That evening she 
told Hobbs of her visit. 

“It has a great charm for me,” she said, “the 
life of a nurse. They see so much of human nature 
and I’ve always loved the study of drugs. Even the 
rows of little bottles in the glass case fascinate me. 
I saw a bottle of laudanum there to-day which I was 
greatly tempted to steal. It’s curious how in the 
old days people were allowed to carry the most 
deadly poison about with them in a signet ring, but 
now we have to steal it at hospitals or get harmless 
doses at a drug-store and then only with a doctor’s 
prescription. 

“And yet they call it a free country. Why there 
are some states in the enlightened East where no 
one is allowed to own a revolver without a permit 
from the mayor or the governor or something.” 

138 


THE JOY OF DYING 


Hobbs lowered his newspaper and forced a smile 
to his lips. 

“That’s only a precaution the law takes,” he ex- 
plained, “for the protection of the mentally weak 
or people who are subject to violent passions. With 
a deadly poison or a revolver at hand there are 
no doubt many men and women who in a moment 
of ” 

“Did you read about that man who killed himself 
in Buffalo yesterday?” Mercita interrupted, and, 
without waiting for her husband’s reply, ran on. 
“Well, he went to a small hotel, stuffed up the cracks 
of the windows and doors with newspapers and turned 
on the gas. All he left was one line scribbled on the 
back of an old envelope : 4 Not good enough.’ Now 
there was a man after my own heart. Nobody asked 
him permission to bring him into the world and he 
didn’t ask any one’s permission to leave it.” 

Hobbs did not continue the conversation but that 
night he preceded his wife to their bedroom and hav- 
ing taken a revolver from a bureau drawer, where he 
had always kept it in case of burglars, locked it in his 
desk. Then he went carefully about the room looking 
for any article wdth which Mercita could possibly 
make an end of herself, but finding nothing went to 
139 


THE JOY OF DYING 


bed and tried to sleep. The next day when he re- 
turned from work he found Mercita ill in bed, and 
he insisted on sending for the family physician, Dr. 
Brandt. When the doctor left Mercita’s bedroom 
he found Hobbs waiting for him in the parlor. Dr. 
Brandt was a stout, florid, cheerful man, and, in his 
physical aspect as well as in his mental attitude 
toward life, in striking contrast to little, stoop- 
shouldered, nervous Hobbs. 

“Nothing serious, I hope?” said Hobbs, drawing 
the doctor into the dimly-lighted parlor. 

“Not at all,” said Brandt assuringly, “not at all 
serious. Nerves upset and a little run down, I should 
think. Needs a tonic and more fresh air and exer- 
cise. I’m going to give her some strychnine, and you 
see that she takes the pills regularly. I’ll leave the 
prescription at Blair’s on my way down town.” 

Hobbs felt his throat getting dry and he spoke 
with some little difficulty. 

“But strychnine is a pretty strong poison, isn’t 
it, doctor?” he asked. 

“It is if you take too much of it at one time,” 
Brandt laughed. “Don’t worry, Bexley; Mercita’s 
a careful patient and I don’t imagine you’re afraid 
of her taking an overdose on purpose.” 

140 


THE JOY OF DYING 


Hobbs forced a smile to his parched lips. “Nat- 
urally not,” he said, “naturally not. I suppose I’m 
a little timid about poisons — always have been. I 
had a friend once whose wife used to threaten to 
kill herself.” 

Brandt tossed up his hands. “Then God help your 
friend,” he said. “But at that I’ll bet his wife took 
it out in threats. It’s a curious thing, Bexley. His- 
tory shows that about four men commit suicide to 
one woman, but if the statistics could be taken I’ll 
bet they would prove that four thousand women 
threaten to one that finally does the act.” 

Hobbs wet his lips with his tongue and nodded 
gravely. “Very curious,” he said. 

“Curious,” Brandt repeated, “curious ! Why its 
the most cruel and insidious weapon that God ever 
put in the power of human beings. In my own pro- 
fessional experience I’ve known several men whose 
wives had the habit. Not one of the women had the 
first idea of killing herself even if she’d had the nerve. 
But the husbands went about with this sword hang- 
ing over their heads night and day and such constant 
terror in their hearts that it became an obsession. 
It cramped their lives, gradually used up their nerv- 
ous systems and in two cases the health of the men 
141 


THE JOY OF DYING 


cracked entirely. Of course, the psychology of it 
was that the husbands thought that this sword that 
their wives had swung over their heads hung by 
a thread, while as a matter of fact it was held by the 
cords of fear and the innate love of life which, as 
cords go, are about as big and strong as a couple 
of wire hawsers.” 

“It does seem pretty hard on the men,” Hobbs 
protested mildly, “especially when they love their 
wives. It’s the one argument that just through his 
fear of the consequences a husband can’t answer, 
and, then, of course, one can never be sure that his 
wife is not the one of the four thousand.” 

“One out of four thousand is a long chance,” 
Brandt laughed. “Anyhow I wouldn’t worry about 
Mercita. Mercita’s not over vain and this talk about 
suicide is only woman’s egotism carried to the highest 
possible degree. Good-night to you.” 

For some time after Brandt had left Hobbs re- 
mained alone in the parlor, and, so far as he was 
able, repeated over and over again all that the physi- 
cian had said. But although he found much comfort 
and probable truth in Brandt’s words he could not 
help regretting that the physician should have recom- 
mended strychnine as a tonic for his wife — especially 
142 


THE JOY OF DYING 


in her present nervous and discontented condition. 
In time he went to Mercita’s room, and sitting by 
the bedside tried to amuse her by telling of what 
he had done during the day and by reading bits of 
news from the evening papers. Just when he had 
apparently succeeded in slightly arousing her inter- 
est the boy from the drug-store arrived with the 
strychnine. The little white tablets were in a small 
bottle, and, with a show of complete indifference, 
Hobbs handed them to his wife. 

“Do you know what these are?” she asked. 

“Brandt told me he was going to give you strych- 
nine, I think,” Bexley said carelessly. 

“That’s right,” Mercita said with a wan smile, 
“and, Bexley dear, don’t get them mixed up with 
your digestive tablets. They’re pretty strong, you 
know.” For a few moments she held the vial up 
before her and stared at the contents. “Half of 
those, Bexley, would be quite enough to do for you 
— quite. Fetch me a glass of water, won’t you 
please?” 

Hobbs hurried downstairs for the water, and when 
he returned he found Mercita sitting up in bed. In 
one hand she held the empty vial and in the palm 
of the other lay the little white tablets. As Bexley 
143 


THE JOY OF DYING 


approached the bed Mercita glanced up at her hus- 
band and then carefully poured all of the tablets 
except one back into the bottle. 

On the following morning when Hobbs started to 
work, although the condition of his wife seemed much 
improved, he left her with a feeling of real reluctance. 
Throughout the long day the picture of Mercita 
sitting up in bed, the white pellets cupped in her 
hand, was always before him. He did his best to 
make light of his fears and tried to console himself 
with Brandt’s words of the preceding evening. But 
the terror that Mercita might even then be lying 
dead never left him. Half a dozen times, on the pre- 
text of asking how she was, he called her on the tele- 
phone. However, the last time that he called she 
asked him not to bother her again as she wanted 
to sleep, and, thus, his last source of communication 
was cut off. Instead of going to lunch he went to 
the public library and read all he could find in 
the encyclopedias concerning poisons, and especially 
strychnine and its antidotes. That evening on his 
way home he stopped in at a drug-store where he 
was unknown and bought some chloroform and 
chloral hydrate. But all that he had read that day 
and all of the books on toxicology, which he consulted 
1U 


THE JOY OF DYING 


afterward, held out but little hope if the patient 
had taken any considerable dose of the fatal drug. 

Although Mercita continued to improve, that is 
so far as her physical condition was concerned, Hobbs 
grew more restless and his mind harbored but the 
one subject. In his moments of leisure at the shop 
it was his only topic of conversation with the other 
men, and whenever he could afford the time he 
hurried to the library and read what the most noted 
authorities had written on suicide and its causes. 
At home he was in constant dread of hurting his 
wife’s feelings, and no longer with his former feeble 
arguments even pretended to combat her wishes. For 
fear of offending her he continued to go further in 
debt, and he became greatly alarmed that his em- 
ployers would learn that he was living beyond his 
income. But Mercita was not satisfied and at times 
broke out in violent tirades against her unhappy lot. 
After such scenes she would usually fly to her room 
and Hobbs would be left alone in the little parlor, 
or, when he could stand the oppression of the room 
no longer, he would leave the house and walk until 
he was physically exhausted. At such times his 
mind constantly visualized the scene that would greet 
him on his return. As he entered the door the maid, 
145 


THE JOY OF DYING 


crying hysterically, would greet him with the tragic 
news and he would bound up the stairways to his 
wife’s bedroom. There he would find Mercita, the 
woman he loved, the only woman he ever could love, 
was passing forever out of his life and he alone was 
to blame. For had not this lovely girl given herself 
to him and had he not failed utterly to make her life 
worth the living? He could see her slight, beautiful 
body on the bed; the look of terror in the big blue 
eyes, the head jerked back, the limbs extended, the 
arched back. And there by her bedside he, Bexley 
Hobbs, who loved her better than all the world beside, 
would stand helpless and hopeless and impotently 
watch the end. Helpless and hopeless he would stand 
there and watch the scene that would sear his brain 
with a scar that would last as long as he did. 

Such a scene, however, took place only in the half- 
crazed brain of Bexley Hobbs. Mercita continued 
to take her one tablet a day and to thrive on it. The 
cure had been progressing for about a fortnight when 
one evening she returned home much later than was 
her custom. To her husband who had been anxiously 
awaiting her coming she at once imparted her all im- 
portant news. A week hence there was to be a gala 
meeting of the feminists of the state at the Opera 
146 


THE JOY OF DYING 


House and she had been chosen to make the speech 
of welcome to the distinguished visitors. 

“Bexley,” she said, her eyes shining with excite- 
ment and suspense, “it is going to be the greatest 
and the happiest hour of my life. But the occasion 
demands that I be properly dressed. I’m sorry be- 
cause I know that you are hard up, but I must 
either get a new evening dress, and a really good 
one, or refuse this honor which the committee has 
offered me.” 

It was an honor, a great honor to his wife, and 
Hobbs appreciated it, but he had no money, he was 
in debt, and his only assets were his life insurance 
policy and the few dollars he had in his pocket. His 
heart was of lead and he turned his unhappy eyes 
helplessly toward those of his wife. 

“I don’t know how it can be done, Mercita,” he 
said, “but give me until to-morrow and I’ll promise 
you to do my best.” 

During supper and afterward as they sat together 
in the parlor Mercita showed only too plainly that 
her feelings had been wounded and that her disap- 
pointment over her husbaiid’s half-hearted promise 
was very keen. At ten o’clock Hobbs kissed his 
wife good night and said that he would take a short 
147 


THE JOY OF DYING 

walk before going to bed. Left alone, Mercita’s 
anger over what she considered the inadequacy of 
her husband to properly provide for her increased 
and she set about to devise some scheme whereby she 
could force him to accede to her wishes. In a short 
time she had thought out the details of a plan which 
she hastened to put into execution. Going to her 
bedroom she quickly undressed and put on her most 
attractive nightgown. Taking the bottle of strych- 
nine from the drawer where she kept it she found 
that seven tablets remained. These she put in an 
envelope which she carefully hid in the drawer. The 
empty bottle and a glass half-filled with water she 
placed on the table by her bedside. Then she turned 
on all the electric lights and went to bed. When her 
husband returned from his walk she would assume a 
great drowsiness and would revive only after much 
effort on the part of Hobbs. Under the circum- 
stances Mercita could not well believe that he would 
refuse her anything 1 — certainly not a new dress. 

* * * * 

Mercita’s bedroom was already filled with the 
morning sunshine when she was awakened by a loud 
knocking at her door. Before she was quite con- 
148 


THE JOY OF DYING 


scious or had realized that the night had passed and 
that she had spent it alone, the door was thrown 
back and she saw the frightened face of her maid, 
and, in the doorway, standing behind the maid, the 
big heavy form of Doctor Brandt. The physician 
gently brushed aside the terror-stricken maid and 
going over to the bed took one of Mercita’s hands 
in both of his own. 

“Little girl,” he said, “I’ve bad news for you. 
Try to be strong, won’t you?” 

“Bexley?” she whispered. 

Brandt nodded. 

“Dead?” 

“I’m afraid so, Mercita. I don’t believe it’s wise 
or kind to hold back the truth.” 

Mercita stared at the physician with wide, fright- 
ened eyes. 

“But how,” she stammered, “how?” 

“They found him in a little hotel downtown. It 
seems he took a room there late last night. He’d 
turned on the gas and had gone to sleep. Bexley 
didn’t suffer, my dear, he didn’t suffer at all.” 

For a few moments there was silence and then 
Mercita asked: 

“Did he — did Bexley leave no word?” 

149 


THE JOY OF DYING 


“Only a short note for me,” Brandt said; “just 
two lines scribbled on an envelope. He told me where 
I could find his life insurance papers and to see that 
you got the money.” 


150 


> 


4 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME 
MARCHING HOME 

Carrington is a forlorn and dismal Virginia 
village which, years ago, several Southern railroads 
selected as a suitable place for a junction. At this 
dreary spot, day after day, night after night, car- 
loads of weary passengers are dumped out of stuffy 
cars and are compelled to wait for trains that are 
invariably late. The resources of Carrington are 
limited to two fruit stands, a drug-store and the 
Central Hotel, which in all ways resembles the pic- 
tures in the newspapers marked “where the murder 
took place.” Once there was the Altmont Inn — a 
large, commodious resort perched on a prettily 
wooded hill just across the railroad tracks from the 
station. 

It was my sad fate to watch the Altmont Inn pass 
from a second-class, fairly successful, summer hotel 
to a weather-beaten, decayed tavern fit neither for 
man nor beast. I knew it in its palmy days, when 
one could sit in a rocking chair on the broad piazza 
151 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


and watch the boarders dancing the waltz and two- 
step to the music of a wheezing violin and a tinkling 
piano, and I was also present the night that Johnnie 
Hardwick, the night-clerk, sang its swan song. I 
had gone to the Inn that night, as was my custom 
whenever I visited Carrington, and, in the dirty, ill- 
lighted office, had found, with much difficulty, a sheet 
of note-paper sufficiently clean of ink stains on which 
to write a letter. When I had finished I took the 
letter to the desk and found Hardwick waiting for 
me with a two-cent stamp in his hand. He was a 
sallow-faced youth, not more than twenty-five years 
old, I should think, and he had big, round, blue eyes 
and a manner that made you like the boy even if you 
mistrusted him. 

“I knew you were going to ask if I had a two-cent 
stamp,” he said, and his thin, anemic lips wavered 
into a wholly charming smile. 

“Why?” I asked. 

He took my pennies and, ignoring the rusty cash 
register, dropped them in the pocket of his ver}^ 
old and worn coat. 

“Why,” he repeated, “because that’s the only kind 
of guests we have here now, and, Bo, I’ll let you in 
on a secret — there ain’t much profit in stamps.” 

152 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


“All in, eh?” I suggested, and glanced about the 
deserted, dust-begrimed office. 

“Yep,” Johnnie laughed, “we’re all in. The boss 
is drunk in the kitchen and the old woman is trying 
to put her six squalling brats to bed in the bridal 
suite, and the gas company has turned off the gas. 
Kerosene is pretty low, too, and we can’t get credit 
at the store.” 

He leaned up against the counter and, for a mo- 
ment, stared idly at the fly-specked chandelier that 
hung over his head, and then once more his lips 
broke into the same charming, irresponsible smile. 
“I don’t exactly know why we keep open any more, 
except the boss is too tight to give the orders to 
close. I suppose you’re waiting for the train to 
God’s country.” 

“I’m going to New York,” I said, “if that’s what 
you mean.” 

“That’s what I mean — God’s country, the big pud- 
dle, the old town. I used to work there — night-clerk 
at the Rosemont. You know, West Forty-fifth, be- 
tween the Hippodrome and the Main Alley.” He 
straightened his lithe, well-knit figure, pursed his lips 
and, with an expression of real seriousness in his eyes, 
looked fairly into mine and slowly shook his head. 

153 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


It was quite evident that the former night-clerk of 
the Rosemont keenly regretted the evil days that 
had befallen him and the ignominy of his present 
surroundings. 

“Did you ever know Violet Doane?” he asked with 
a sudden and renewed interest, “or Mildred De Long 
or Vera Morris?” 

I shook my head. 

“No,” he said, and he was plainly disappointed 
at my limited acquaintance. “They all used to stop 
at the Rosemont. Nice girls — you know, kind of 
free and no formality about ’em. Violet Doane’s 
with the Follies this year. I saw her picture in the 
Sunday Telegraph. Nice girl, Violet, and a good 
friend of mine. Good times, those!” 

“Why did you leave and come to such a forsaken 
place as this?” I asked. 

Hardwick glanced up at me as suddenly and as 
sharply as if I had struck him, and when he an- 
swered me he spoke slowly and with much delibera- 
tion, which was not at all his way. 

“They fired me,” he said, “because they com- 
plained I was too fresh with the lady guests; but 
you know those girls are naturally friendly. It’s 
their way, and I never heard yet of a night-clerk 
154 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


on Forty-fifth Street being a Saint Anthony. It’s 
not the way they play the part, but I got fired all 
right. Then I drifted around New York for a while 
doing any old job. I was usher at Miner’s Eighth 
Avenue, and I worked in Delaney’s pool-room for a 
few months, and then my health went bad and — ” 
His voice trailed off to a whisper, and, then, he seemed 
to pull himself together again and he went on. “Then 
the Doc said I had to get out, and an old friend I 
knew in the hotel business told me of this job and 
I came right down. I’ve been here ever since. It 
was Violet Doane, I was speaking about to you, that 
staked me to the railroad fare and got me some 
nice clothes and things.” 

He looked down at the seedy, threadbare suit he 
wore and, then, glancing at me, smiled a grim, mirth- 
less smile and tossed his chin in the air. “Times is,” 
he said, “and times was, eh! Now if that old man 
out there in the kitchen ever comes to, I’ll be fired 
again, and when I walk out of that door I’ll have 
the clothes I’ve got on my back and the stars over 
my head, and nothing between.” 

“I’ve just come from the Madison Springs, where 
I have been going every summer for twenty years,” 
I said. “The assistant-clerk over there left yester- 
155 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


day. I heard the day-clerk speaking about it this 
afternoon. Why don’t you try for that job?” 

A sudden light flashed up in the boy’s eyes and 
then vanished as quickly as it had come. “No use,” 
he said. “I know about that Madison Springs Hotel. 
It’s a nice, old, respectable place and they’d want 
good references, and I haven’t got ’em. It would 
have been a great chance, though, a great chance.” 
And then the light once more flared up in the blue 
eyes and his whole manner became alert and eager. 
Even before he spoke the words I was sorry, for I 
knew what he was going to say and I knew that I 
had made a mistake ever to have mentioned the 
vacancy at the Madison Springs. As Hardwick had 
said, it was an old, respectable place, dignified and 
conservative, and the last hotel to harbor this boy 
graduate from the Tenderloin. I think he knew quite 
well the thought that was in my mind, for he seized 
me eagerly by the arm, and with his big eyes he 
fairly begged me to help him. 

“You wouldn’t do it,” he whispered, “would you? 
Not after all I’ve told you about the Rosemont and 
my** being an usher, and working in the poolroom, 
and Violet Doane and all that. Of course you 
wouldn’t. But you don’t know what a chance like 
156 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


that would be for me. It would give me another 
start. The Doc told me I’d die if I went back to the 
big town, and I’m broke and I’m going to be thrown 
out. I tell you I’ll starve. For God’s sake, mister, 
whatever your name is, please say a good word for 
me. I’ll promise you I’ll behave. I promise you. 
Please give me a chance.” There was a telephone 
on the desk, and he suddenly pushed it toward me. 
“Please, please,” he begged. 

In the pathetic figure before me there was nothing 
at all of the swaggering, smiling ex-clerk of the Rose- 
mont. Just a poor, sick boy, who saw the hope of 
a roof to cover him and a chance to start life again 
in a better, decenter way, and for the moment I knew 
that he believed that if he were given the chance 
that he could and would make good. 

In five minutes it was all over, and such a mistake 
as I had made on account of my sympathy for the 
boy had been made beyond recall. On my recom- 
mendation as to his ability and moral character, 
Johnnie Hardwick had been promised the position 
of under-clerk at the Madison Springs, and in an- 
other five minutes we had both left the Altmont Inn, 
and both of us for the last time. 

A month later when I returned to the Madison 

157 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


Springs Johnnie Hardwick was the first to greet me. 
But it was a very different Johnnie Hardwick from 
the one I had left that night at Carrington. The 
blue eyes shone clear, his face looked less like putty, 
and the shadows and the lines put there by dissipa- 
tion and the lack of healthy food had almost dis- 
appeared. The seedy, gray suit had given way to a 
natty blue serge coat and a pair of carefully creased 
white flannels. His joy at seeing me was appar- 
ently real, and after he had gripped my hand he 
stepped back from the desk to show me the beauty 
of his raiment. 

“Pretty nifty, eh?” he laughed. “I wish some of 
those ginks on Broadway that had me for down and 
out could see me now.” He pushed the register 
toward me and as he gave me a pen he turned his 
hand so that the sunlight that streamed in through 
the office window fell full on a valuable diamond ring. 
“A little souvenir from one of the lady guests,” he 
explained with evident pride. “Pretty little thing, 
isn’t it?” 

“Why, Hardwick,” I protested, “you shouldn’t be 
taking rings from the women guests. You know you 
promised to'be good.” 

Johnnie fairly laughed aloud. “I’m good, all right. 

158 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


I’ve played the innocent kid as if I’d been trained for 
it by Belasco. They’re all crazy about me. The 
dame that gave me that ring was older than the 
mountains around here, and she spent two hours 
every morning hanging over the desk telling me how 
cute her grandchildren were. She wanted to adopt 
me, but I compromised on the ring.” He leaned 
toward me and his voice fell to a whisper. “And I 
tell you, Bo, it was coming to me. Those comic 
sayings of the grandchildren was pretty poor comedy 
and awful old stuff.” 

For the time further conversation was impossible, 
as one of the women guests came to inquire about 
some picture postal-cards and, in his desire to serve 
the newcomer, Johnnie apparently forgot my exist- 
ence entirely. Half an hour later, when I returned 
from breakfast, I found at least half a dozen of the 
prettiest girls at the Springs hanging over the desk 
and chatting and laughing merrily with my protege. 
All that I learned later that day and night convinced 
me that Hardwick had made a distinct niche for 
himself in the social life of the Springs. To the 
younger set of girls he was a sort of Bunthorne in 
flannels ; the older women liked him for his ever-ready 
courtesy, and the men, although they probably un- 
159 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


derstood him, found his glib tongue amusing and his 
eager, fever-like readiness to join in anything and 
everything that was going on not only interesting 
but often useful. 

At some period in his murky past Johnnie must 
have been an ash-lot ball-player, because he was 
promptly installed as the regular catcher of the 
hotel nine, and largely through his efforts the team 
became the champions of the valley. He had also 
learned to play a fair beginner’s game of golf, and 
he was always ready to join a riding party and take 
a chance with any horse that was too decrepit or 
too spirited for the others to ride. It was, however, 
in the ballroom at night that Johnnie’s star shone 
the brightest. Even if he had learned his dancing 
in Harlem casinos and the dance-halls of the East 
Side, he had learned his lesson well, and he played no 
favorites. He danced with the little girls of ten, and 
the twenty-year-old daughters of the northern mil- 
lionnaires, and the elderly wives of the first families 
of Virginia, always with equal grace, and always with 
exactly the same amount of apparent abandon and 
tireless enthusiasm. 

And, so, although Hardwick’s English was not al- 
ways polished and sometimes he forgot the dignity 
160 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


of his present surroundings, and when with the men 
occasionally relapsed into the lingo and tales of his 
hectic past, he was liked for his unquestioned accom- 
plishments, a certain innate courtesy, and an ever- 
lasting desire to please. 

As an instance of his cleverness he told me that 
he had always refused to play poker. “I’d queer 
myself with the mothers if I played with the boys,” 
he explained, “and the old men know that no man 
should gamble with a hotel clerk’s salary; but, be- 
lieve me, I’ve watched ’em, and it hurts not to sit 
in when they ask you. It would be as easy as 
money from the old folks at home, only there’d be 
more of it.” And, knowing Johnnie’s former asso- 
ciation with professional gamblers, I did not doubt 
that his confidence in his own prowess was well 
placed. 

Of his ability to get on with men there was no 
question. It was only in his relationship with women 
that I feared for my protege. That he had known 
many and that they had liked him better than most 
men I knew from episodes that he had told me of 
his past. Not that Hardwick boasted of his con- 
quests, because he certainly never regarded himself 
in the light of a hero. He spoke of his love-affairs 
161 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


as he did of his hardships, or a big coup at the race- 
track, or a good fight in the back-room of a bar- 
room. They were just incidents in a short life which 
had been crowded with incidents. But that they had 
played the big and the dominating part in his life 
of adventure there could be no doubt whatever, al- 
though, to give him credit, I do not believe that 
Johnnie himself knew this. 

I suppose it was out of gratitude for having ob- 
tained his present comfortable position for him that 
I was the only man at the Springs whom he chose 
to honor with his confidence. We were sitting alone 
late one night on the piazza, and I suppose it was 
the moonlight and the wonderful beauty of the silent 
fields and the ridges of endless hills that made him 
talk. 

“I’ve got a lot to thank you for,” he said; “a 
whole lot.” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” I protested. “I only got you 
the chance. It was up to you to make good, and 
you did it.” 

“Thank you,” he said simply. “If you think I’ve 
made good, I don’t care very much about the rest. 
But I’ll tell you it hasn’t always been so easy to 
keep going, and to bluff, and to tell ’em just enough 
162 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


to keep ’em laughing and not quite enough to get 
thrown out. And these dames up here . . 

“The women guests,” I suggested. 

“Yes, dames, skirts . . . you know. I never was 
by way of meeting real swells before.” 

“Do you like the change?” I asked. 

Hardwick smiled and shook his head. 

“Why, yes, of course, but I can’t quite make ’em 
out. Sometimes they’re so like the other women I’ve 
known. Do you suppose all women are alike in some 
ways ?” 

But before I could answer him he asked suddenly : 
“Do you know Margaret Warren? Her mother runs 
the boarding-house at Jackson’s Farm.” 

I knew Jackson’s Farm as a sort of refined road- 
house where the people from the Madison Springs 
went for fried chicken and waffle suppers. For many 
years I had enjoyed a speaking acquaintance with 
the Widow Warren and had seen her daughter Mar- 
garet grow from a delicate child to a healthy, rosy- 
cheeked country girl of eighteen. 

“Yes,” I said. “Why?” 

A slight color came into Johnnie’s gray face, and 
I suppose in any other face it would have been a 
blush. 


163 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


“Why,” he repeated ; “I don’t know, except I think 
she’s a wonder. She’s not like the rest. . . . She’s 
different, all right.” 

“I’m afraid I don’t know Margaret very well,” I 
said, and wondered why, of all the women Hardwick 
had met that summer, he should pick out the daugh- 
ter of the lady who ran the boarding-house at Jack- 
son’s Farm. In all ways she seemed the antithesis 
of the girl that would attract him. Simple and un- 
sophisticated, I knew that in case she liked Johnnie 
she would be as putty in his hands. It was just a 
question as to the angle from which he regarded her. 

“Have you seen much of her?” I asked. 

“Not a great deal,” he said. “She never comes to 
the hotel here, and it’s a good two-mile walk to the 
Farm. I see her when I go there with parties for 
dinner — she waits on the table generally. And I’ve 
been there by myself several times and had a couple 
of walks and talks with her, and once we went for a 
long ride to Mason’s Crossroads. Gee, but how that 
kid can ride! She calls me Othello, because I tell 
her of all the strange places I’ve seen and the crazy 
things I’ve done.” 

“All?” I asked. 

Johnnie grinned foolishly and shook his head. 

164 * 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


“No, not exactly. I only hand her the expurgated 
copy. She wouldn’t know what I was talking about 
if I told her the whole truth and nothing but the 
truth. She’s the finest bit of ‘calico’ I ever met 
with.” 

And by the manner of his saying it I knew that 
Margaret — that is, so far as Johnnie Hardwick was 
concerned — was in safe hands. 

If I had any doubts on the question the unhappy 
incident that occurred a week later would have com- 
pletely dispelled them. A large crowd from the 
hotel had gone over to Jackson’s Farm for supper, 
and Johnnie and I were included in the party. As 
usual, Margaret waited on the table, and I could 
not see that Hardwick took any particular notice of 
the girl, or that she was any more assiduous in her 
attentions to him than she was to the other guests. 
But when supper was over and the rest of the party 
had gone to the sitting-room to dance, I missed the 
clerk and took it for granted that he had wandered 
off somewhere with Margaret. It was a particularly 
lively party that night and the scene in the sitting- 
room when the dancing was at its height was joyous 
in the extreme. As there were no drinks sold at 
Jackson’s Farm the guests brought their own bot- 
165 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 

tied goods with them, and sometimes — and I am 
afraid that this was one of those times — they brought 
too many. Several of the men were particularly 
gay, but until the time that Johnnie and Margaret 
made their appearance there had been nothing but 
a good deal of noise and a general display of youth- 
ful hilarity and spirits. Margaret remained in the 
doorway, while Johnnie had moved a few feet away 
from her to speak to a group of girls who were 
resting from the very arduous dancing. Tommy 
Wilson, who was the most befuddled of the young 
men of the party, caught sight of the pretty country 
girl standing in the doorway and, although at the 
time he was dancing with one of the girls from the 
Springs, he suddenly left his partner and made a 
rush for Margaret. Before she had time to know 
what was really happening, Wilson had seized her 
round the waist and, in an attempt to make her dance, 
was dragging her rather roughly about the floor. 
It was one of those occasions when a girl more know- 
ing in the ways of the world would have accepted 
the situation and have humored her evidently too 
hilarious admirer. But Margaret lacked the poise 
and the tact of a girl more used to the ways of the 
world in which she suddenly found herself. With a 
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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


purely primitive instinct she believed that she was 
being insulted, turned scarlet with rage and mortifi- 
cation, and made violent and entirely futile efforts to 
free herself from her unwelcome partner. Fearing 
what would happen and, as it came to pass, exactly 
what did happen, I started to mildly interfere. But 
I was far across the room, and long before I could 
reach the struggling girl Johnnie Hardwick had 
rushed to her rescue. In two bounds he had reached 
the man’s side and, with the blind, ungovernable rage 
that he had acquired years before in his gutter life, 
he swung his right to the point of Wilson’s jaw. 
As the noise of the blow echoed through the silent 
room, filled with its now thoroughly terrified guests, 
Wilson uttered a half-articulate cry, his strong 
broad frame crumpled and, sliding through Mar- 
garet’s arms, fell to the floor an unconscious, help- 
less mass. 

Never had I seen a cleaner cut piece of work nor 
better done, but I was sorry. Deserved it was, no 
doubt, but the same result might have been gained in 
a more diplomatic and peaceful way and in a manner 
that would have portended less sure disaster to John- 
nie Hardwick. The Wilsons had been visitors at the 
Springs for many years, were rich, their wishes went 
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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


far, and Tommy Wilson was neither a generous foe 
nor a man who easily forgot. Some of the women 
led Margaret, weeping hysterically, from the scene 
of the disaster, while the men threw water in Wilson’s 
face, poured brandy through his drawn, parched 
lips, and gradually brought him back to semicon- 
sciousness. The only one who did not try to assist 
was Johnnie, who stood next to me, on the edge of 
the crowd and, with folded arms and his face gone 
quite white with rage, looked down on his slowly 
reviving victim. 

“The rat,” he whispered to me through his clenched 
teeth. “Did you see how the bully toppled after 
the first crack?” 

The boy’s pale lips wavered into an ugly smile 
and his whole look was that of a fighting terrier. 
“Did you notice that uppercut I handed him?” he 
snarled. “It was a sweet wallop for sure. Teddy 
Burns taught me that when we both ran with the 
Doonin gang. It’s a great blow when you got ’em 
ready for the count, and it’s good, too, for drunken 
men who haven’t got no more sense than to insult 
innocent girls.” 

I took Johnnie by the arm, and after he had 
stopped to turn one more malicious glance at the 
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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


man on the floor, he allowed me to lead him unre- 
sisting from the room. The piazza was filled with 
little groups of excited girls and women eagerly 
whispering about the fight, and so Hardwick and I 
walked out on the lawn and sat down on a bench 
that overlooked the meadows down in the valley 
and the endless hills all bathed in the silver moon- 
light. For some time there was silence between us. 
I lighted a cigar and Johnnie sat with his hands 
between his knees, his palms pressed closely together, 
and his unseeing eyes fixed on the undulating ridges 
of the distant mountains. 

“What are you going to do about it?” I asked at 
last. 

Johnnie glanced at me, and in the moonlight I 
could see that the look of rage had cleared from 
his face and in a feeble way he tried to smile. 

“Do,” he said. “Why, what can I do but get 
out? What chance has a hotel clerk got against 
that young cub with all his money and his family 
and friends behind him?” 

“The management might back you up,” I sug- 
gested. “From all you say they have treated you 
very well over there.” 

But Johnnie only shook his head and continued 

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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


to gaze across the valley. “That’s just it,” he said. 
“They’ve treated me so darned well that I don’t want 
to put them in wrong. That blackguard has my 
goat all right and I’ve got to get out.” For a 
moment he was silent again and when I glanced at 
the pale, putty face I saw that the lips were pressed 
into a hard, straight line, and the big, blue eyes were 
half closed and looked very tired and misty. He laid 
his hand on my knee and when he spoke there was 
a catch in his voice and it scarcely rose above a 
whisper. 

After all, Johnnie was only a boy in years and 
almost a stranger to this better, sweeter kind of life. 
“It’s pretty tough, Bo,” he said; “I tell you, it’s 
pretty tough. Just when things seemed to be com- 
ing my way and I was getting on, and mixing with 
white folks, and living decent. Then the joker in 
the pack turns up like it did to-night and I see red 
and forget I’m not back with the Doonin gang fight- 
ing the Cooley crowd. And it’s a funny thing, but 
all my troubles seem to come from women — good 
women and bad women — but always women.” 

With the suggestion of a sigh and a shrug of his 
shoulders he got up, stretched his arms above his 
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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


head and turned to look toward the piazza of the 
farmhouse. 

“Wilson’s all right again,” he said. “He’s sitting 
up there on the porch with a lot of girls bathing his 
head.” 

He started to walk away and, then, turning back, 
in an awkward, shy sort of way, held out his hand 
toward me. 

“I’m obliged to you,” he said, “for looking after 
me to-night. I owe you a lot one way or another, 
and I’m sorry I didn’t make good.” 

I tried to say something, but by way of protest 
he threw up his hand. 

“That’s all right, I understand,” he said. “And 
I wish you’d tell them up there that I’ve taken the 
runabout and am going to drive back alone. I 
brought young Morris over with me, but there’s 
plenty of room for him in one of the big carriages. 
Good-night.” 

He swung abruptly on his heel and I watched him 
slowly crossing the lawn on his way to the stables. 
His head was held high and his shoulders thrown 
back, I imagine because he knew that the crowd on 
the porch could easily see him in the moonlight and 
he wanted to appear to be independent of them and 
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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


not to care. But I knew that he cared more than 
Johnnie Hardwick had the language to tell how much 
he cared, and that the silent figure slowly crossing 
the moonlit lawn was the most unhappy, lonely soul 
in the whole world. 

When I came down to breakfast the following 
morning I found Johnnie all packed and ready for 
his departure. 

“I resigned before they had a chance to fire me,” 
he laughed. “I telephoned to Jackson’s Farm this 
morning and Mrs. Warren says she’ll take me in 
over there. I’m not broke, you see, so I’m going to 
the Farm and sit in front of the office desk for a 
while instead of standing behind it. The old lady’s 
all for me for knocking out Wilson last night and 
she’s going to give me rates. It’s an ill wind that 
blows nobody — not even poor little Johnnie Hard- 
wick — good, eh?” 

With a very small capital and no plans or pros- 
pects for the future, but his spirits and his flippant 
gaiety apparently entirely restored, Johnnie left the 
Madison Springs. With a cheer of farewell and 
good luck a few of us started him on his way to Jack- 
son’s Farm and to his new life as a paying boarder. 
But I felt instinctively that the new life would not 
172 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


prove a success, and my instincts on this occasion 
proved entirely correct. 

Twice during the following week I saw him and 
on both occasions he was with Margaret. Once I 
met them driving along a wood road in Margaret’s 
runabout, and the other time I found them sitting on 
a fallen tree near the lane that led to the Farm. 
Johnnie was evidently telling the girl some marvellous 
adventure from the past, for she was listening to 
him with the most rapt attention, but when I called 
to them they jumped up from the log and came run- 
ning to meet me like a couple of happy children. 
For a few minutes we stood talking and laughing 
at the side of the road. Johnnie told me that al- 
though his funds were almost gone, he was so pleased 
with his present life that he intended to become a 
permanent paying guest at Mrs. Warren’s, and 
Margaret assured me that Johnnie, although a 
boarder, did most of the work and was the greatest 
asset Jackson’s Farm had ever known. When I left 
them I was quite sure that my fears as to the success 
of Hardwick’s life at the Farm were groundless, and 
I even dared to hope that some day he would marry 
Margaret and settle down as the real manager of a 
real roadhouse. But again my best wishes for 
173 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


Johnnie’s welfare went wrong, and it was certainly 
through no fault of his present life, even if it were 
of his somewhat lurid past. 

Two days after I had met Johnnie and Margaret 
by the roadside I was greatly surprised to receive 
a visit from Mrs. Warren. For many years I had 
known Mrs. Warren as the proprietress of Jackson’s 
Farm and as a sweet, kindly, well-born lady who had 
been forced by reduced circumstances to run a road- 
house, but hitherto I had never enjoyed anything 
approaching her confidence. That she had learned 
through Johnnie himself or through others that the 
young man was by way of being a protege of mine 
and that the present visit was in some way connected 
with him I had no doubt whatever. It took a long 
time for the good lady to tell her story, and it was 
not told without considerable lamentation and many 
tears. In the short time that he had known her 
Johnnie had evidently endeared himself to the old 
lady, as he did to all women of all ages. But whether 
it was through her own ingenuousness or Johnnie’s 
failure to speak freely of all of his past, Mrs. War- 
ren had apparently formed an entirely erroneous 
idea of the young man’s early life. In any case it 
was certainly the very last word in hard luck stories. 
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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


It seemed that on the previous evening an automobile 
party from New York, who were turning a pro- 
tracted tour of the South into one continuous joy- 
ride, had stopped for dinner and the night at Jack- 
son’s Farm. Whether the two ladies of the party 
were Violet Doane or Mildred De Long or any . of 
the other former friends of Hardwick whom he knew 
when he was at the Rosemont I do not know, but 
that they were very beautiful ladies and very gay 
and very old friends of Johnnie there could be no 
doubt whatever. According to Mrs. Warren, no 
sooner had the two young women alighted from the 
automobile and recognized her favorite guest than 
the echoes of their cheers of delight and the endear- 
ing names they called him could be heard reverberat- 
ing from mountain to mountain, up and down the 
entire length of the valley. 

“Pretty girls both of them, very pretty girls,” 
Mrs. Warren admitted, drawing her slight figure 
very taut, “but my belief is that they were, if you 
will pardon the expression, scarlet women. Being 
such old friends of Mr. Hardwick I couldn’t very 
well refuse them board and lodging for the night, 
but the way they carried on was something scan- 
dalous. Mr. Hardwick, I must say, behaved very 
175 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


well, and didn’t want to have dinner with them, but 
they would have it their own way. We’ve had some 
pretty gay parties at the Farm, as you know, but 
never such a noisy one as that one last night. They 
got away this morning, I’m happy to say, but what 
I came to see you about is Mr. Hardwick.” 

I tried to look sympathetic and expressed great 
faith in Johnnie’s nobility of character, but I knew 
that so far as Jackson’s Farm was concerned his 
fate was sealed. 

“I wouldn’t care for myself,” the good lady went 
on tearfully, “but I don’t think that any young man 
with friends like that is a fit companion for my 
Margaret. And the worst of it is Margaret likes 
him. The girl is sort of fascinated by his city ways 
and she won’t have anything more to do with any of 
the boys in the valley.” 

“But what can I possibly do?” I asked. 

“You must ask him to go away,” Mrs. Warren 
begged. “If I did it Margaret would never speak to 
me again. Young girls can’t understand that a 
mother is only trying to do what is best for them. 
Please, please ask him to go away.” 

The old lady buried her face in her hands and her 
frail shoulders shook in a series of long, low sobs. 
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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


Once more it seemed that Hardwick must be starting 
on his way and once more for the same old reason. 
My conscience told me that Mrs. Warren was prob- 
ably right and, so, with great reluctance, I promised 
to grant her request. 

That afternoon I drove over to the Farm and 
once more Johnnie and I sat on the lawn and talked 
a very sincere heart-to-heart talk. There was no 
moonlight now, but the soft, cool air was filled with 
the wonderful golden glow of the late summer after- 
noon. Before us lay the valley, rich in its waving 
cornfields and velvety green pasture meadows, and, 
far beyond, the protecting hills rising to meet the 
clear blue sky. Friendly robins were hopping and 
chirping about us on the lawn ; we could see the cows 
grazing in the meadows and the swarms of white 
chickens at the chicken farm down the hill, near the 
well-kept, well-filled barns; and we could hear the 
dogs baying to be let loose from the stables. Here 
was surely a scene of peace and plenty which was 
not easy to ask a man to leave for any odd job that 
might await him beyond the hills that shut in this 
restful valley from the turmoil of the big world 
outside. 

I rather imagine that Johnnie had at once guessed 

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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


the object of my mission, for he listened to my words 
in silence and without a protest of any kind what- 
ever. When I had finished he looked up at me as 
a dog might look at the master who had struck him. 
He got up from the bench and, with his hands resting 
on his hips, looked slowly about him — at the house, 
and at the stables, and at the well-tilled fields, and 
at the rolling meadows and the wooded hills. Several 
times his lips parted as if he were going to say some- 
thing, but each time the words seemed to die in his 
parched throat. 

“I’m terribly sorry, Johnnie,” I said at last, know- 
ing perfectly well how inadequate anything I could 
say must be to the boy; “is there nothing I can 
do?” 

“Yes,” he said. “You can take me and my suit- 
case over to the station. I’d just about have time 
to catch the evening train. It won’t take me but a 
few minutes to pack.” 

I knew that he bade good-bye to Mrs. Warren, but 
I think that Margaret must have been away from the 
farm at the moment, because from something he said 
I’m quite sure that he did not see her again. In al- 
most complete silence we drove down the hill, out the 
gate, and along the shady road that led to the sta- 
178 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 

tion. When we had reached our destination there 
was still half an hour before Johnnie’s train left for 
Carrington, but he insisted that I should not wait, 
but return at once to the Springs. I offered to loan 
him some money, but he smiled and shook his head. 

“No, thank you,” he said. “I’ve got a little some- 
thing left from my wages, and besides, I’m a tramp 
clerk, and we swell hoboes never borrow.” 

“Have you any plans?” I asked. 

Again he shook his head and smiled the same mirth- 
less smile. 

“No, nothing for the present,” he said. “Some 
time, if I ever really make good, I’d like to go back 
there,” and he nodded in the direction of the farm. 
“I think you’d better be going now,” he added, 
“you’ll be late for supper. Thank you for all you’ve 
done, and if you don’t mind I’ll look you up when 
I get back to the big town.” 

I gave him my address and we shook hands and 
as I drove away I glanced back and saw the boy 
sitting on his valise on the deserted platform waiting 
for the train that was to carry him somewhere, any- 
where, to a new land of adventure. 

A year or more elapsed before Hardwick kept 
his promise to look me up in the big town, although, 
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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


during the interval, I heard of him once and directly 
from him several times. A man I knew and who was 
staying at Madison Springs when Johnnie was there 
saw him the following winter in Havana. He met 
him at a masquerade ball where the women, at least, 
were not of the great world of society, and my friend 
assured me that Hardwick was apparently the life 
of the party and the unquestioned beau of the ball. 
My correspondence with him was entirely by picture 
postal-cards and altogether one-sided, as he never 
gave me any address to which I could write him. 
The first card arrived soon after my return to New 
York and came from Atlanta, which showed that he 
had taken a southern course after leaving Virginia. 
At spasmodic intervals I afterward heard from him 
from Macon, New Orleans, Santiago and Panama. 
Just some foolish picture-cards which he thought 
would appeal to my sense of humor, and a few 
scribbled words of good wishes, but nothing of 
himself or of his doings. About Christmas-time I 
received the last message from him. It came in the 
form of a picture of a holly wreath, and in the centre 
was inscribed a very bad poem wishing me good cheer 
and the blessings of the Yuletide season. 

Then followed almost six months of silence and 

180 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 

I thought that Johnnie had forgotten me entirely, 
but one day in the early summer he came to pay 
me his long-promised visit. In his easy, exuberant 
way it was the Johnnie of old, but in other ways 
there was a great change. To the ever-confiding blue 
eyes had been added a look of seriousness, and his 
manner was more alert and his mind even more active 
than before. From the rambling, disjointed story 
he told me it was evident that through no particular 
effort of his own, good fortune, or at least the prom- 
ise of it, had come his way. It was also apparent that 
having once tasted the fruits of business success, he 
had given the same terrier-like interest to it that he 
had formerly devoted to amusing himself. His for- 
tunes dated from an all-night session with a couple 
of prospectors in the back-room of a hotel in Para, 
where he was holding his old position of night-clerk. 
The prospectors, evidently charmed by Hardwick’s 
manner, and Johnnie, entranced by the tales of the 
great wealth that lay hidden in the Brazilian hills, 
decided to pool their interests, and the next morning 
Hardwick gave up his certain wage as a hotel clerk 
for the very uncertain fortunes of the gold-digger. 
That he and his partners had eventually discovered 
and taken over mines of great value Johnnie believed 
181 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


implicitly, but, like most prospectors, they had 
lacked the means to operate them and their earnings 
had so far been only in proportion to their capital. 
But that there had been earnings there could be no 
doubt, for Johnnie had plenty of money on which to 
live in great splendor at the Waldorf, and he wore 
jeweled rings of real value on nearly every finger 
of both hands. Of the three partners, he told me 
that he had been judged the one with the glibbest 
tongue and the most convincing manner, and, there- 
fore, had been chosen to come to New York to raise 
the money necessary to open up the hidden treasures 
of the Brazilian mines. 

“But to whom are you going to look for your 
capital ?” I asked a little incredulously. 

“To my friends,” Johnnie laughed. “You didn’t 
know I had friends, did you? But I have — the same 
friends who let me starve. Rich gamblers, and sport- 
ing men, and crooked brokers who wouldn’t give me 
the price of a sandwich when I was on my uppers, 
but who would back me for millions if I could show 
them a gambler’s chance to make a thousand per 
cent. And that’s just what I can show them — a 
gambler’s chance. Long shots, perhaps, but I’ve 
got stable-tips in the way of ore samples that’ll 
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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


make ’em come across with the coin. But, between 
you and me, they’re not long-shots — they’re sure 
things with a short price against every one of 
them.” 

“Then if they are such sure things,” I asked, 
“why not let me in on them?” 

But Johnnie only smiled and shook his head. 
“No, not you,” he said. “You’re too respectable 
for this game. We may have the cards, but the 
dealers are all crooked, every one of us, and we’re 
going to get the big end every time. It’s a ‘public 
be damned’ game if there ever was one. Besides, if 
I strike it rich, and it’s dollars to pennies that in 
six months I’ll have my millions and be back here 
with bells on, then I’ll give you all you can use. 
When I was down and out you treated me white, 
and Johnnie Hardwick, the night-clerk, never for- 
gets.” 

With this conciliatory but somewhat theatrical 
speech (for Johnnie loved melodrama) he left me, 
and I did not see him again for several weeks. Then 
it was only for a brief call to say good-bye and to 
tell me that he had raised the money and was leav- 
ing the next day on his way to Rio. 

Another six months of silence, and, then, when 

183 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


winter had set in and the town had reached the 
season of its greatest gaiety, Johnnie came marching 
home, and, in his own words, he came back with bells 
on. Whether the confiding public had been fleeced 
of its money by three wise and perhaps rather un- 
scrupulous young men, or whether the mines were 
of the great value the young men had contended they 
were, I do not know. But that Johnnie had made 
good his threat to come into his millions I have no 
doubt whatever, because he offered to loan or to 
give me several of them. 

If Johnnie had grown older by a couple of years 
since I had first met him, he was just as young in 
his enthusiasm for life, and he was still the genial 
night-clerk, but now the night-clerk off for a holi- 
day with a few coins to jangle in his pocket. His 
clothes were as conspicuous as were his rings and his 
countless stick pins. He wore a sealskin coat to all 
the musical comedies and dropped it ostentatiously 
on the floor as if it had been a linen duster. The 
head-waiters of the smarter restaurants soon came 
to recognize him as one of their best-known and best- 
paying patrons. He gave supper parties in private 
rooms to beautiful show girls, and the suppers were 
the envy of all Broadway, especially that part of it 
184 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


that was not invited. He established himself in the 
finest of bachelor apartments and hung the silk- 
brocaded walls with fearful and expensive oil-paint- 
ings. Heavy velvet curtains and portieres were 
draped about in most luxurious profusion, and the 
rooms were filled with the most awful collection of 
junk ever unloaded by unscrupulous art dealers on 
a well-meaning but ignorant patron. If New York 
offered any amusement that money could buy and of 
which Johnnie did not avail himself to the fullest 
extent, then I know nothing of the pleasures of the 
town. 

Every few weeks he would drop in at my rooms 
and, in a somewhat guarded way, tell me of his joy- 
ous life and of his happiness at the fulfilment of his 
every whim in a town where he had once been so poor 
and downtrodden. It was several months after his 
triumphant return, and, on this particular occasion, 
the talk had taken a somewhat serious turn. I don’t 
really know how it happened, unless it was that 
spring was in the air, and it had been a rather 
strenuous winter, and one’s mind naturally turned 
to the woods and running waters and green fields. 

“But, Johnnie,” I protested, after he had told me 
of some particularly wild party that he had given 
185 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


the night before, “you can’t go on like this forever. 
You’ll break up. Why don’t you mix things a bit 
and get out of town for awhile and try some sort of 
regular exercise. Buy a place in the country near 
here and live a little more sensibly. You’ll want 
to settle down some of these days and then it will 
be fine to have a home all ready for you.” 

For a moment he hesitated and then looked up at 
me a little shyly, and as if he were somewhat ashamed 
of what he had done. 

“I know what you mean,” he said. “I understand. 
It was just that I wanted to have my fling first. I’d 
been waiting for a regular fling and wishing for it 
all of my life, and when the chance came I grabbed 
it and — well, in a way, I liked it, too. But, good 
Lord, I know what you mean. I’ve bought a piece 
of ground already, just off Riverside Drive, and I’m 
going to build the prettiest house you ever saw. I 
wanted to have it a sort of castle effect, but when 
the architect fellow had looked over the ground and 
had sized me up, he said I didn’t want no castle 
but a pure marble building with no trimmings at all. 
He said that when it was all finished and people 
would compare it to the Dutch castles and Italian 
palaces in the neighborhood my place would look 
186 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


like a snowflake on a dumping ground. That’s just 
what he said, and they tell me he’s a great swell at 
his trade. I’ve got the plans now and we’ll break 
ground pretty soon.” 

He stopped talking and glanced at me for my 
approval, and, seeing that he had it, went on again. 
“And when I get the marble shack all up and fixed 
inside and running just about right, then I’m going 
after the place in the country you’re talking about. 
But I can tell you it won’t be around here, nor a 
bit like it. I know the place and it’s a long, long 
jump from this gay old town, a long jump. Just 
because I’ve been sort of hitting it up along Broad- 
way since I got back, you mustn’t think that the 
white lights have blinded me. I had the home in the 
country and all that doped out long ago, and it’s 
all coming in its own good time.” 

I think “its own good time” must have come 
sooner than Johnnie expected, because a week later 
he called on me, but as I was out he scribbled the fol- 
lowing words on his card: “Have been thinking over 
what you said and am going to Virginia to-night. 
If I have good news I’ll wire — Johnnie.” 

For the next few days I waited for a message 
from Jackson’s Farm, but it did not come, and al- 
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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


most a month had passed before I again got news 
from Johnnie. It arrived in the form of a brief 
note asking me to come to see him at his rooms late 
the following afternoon as he had something of im- 
portance to show me. 

I found him standing in front of the fireplace in 
his sitting-room surrounded by all the gorgeousness 
that money and a lack of good taste could devise. 
A big golden lamp in one corner gave out a little 
light and the last faint rays of the setting sun filtered 
through the open windows, but the room was quite 
dark and, where Johnnie stood in the shadow of the 
fireless fireplace, I could not at first tell from his 
face whether the news he had brought back from 
Virginia was good news or bad news. 

“Hello,” I cried, trying to be as cheerful as I 
could, “when did you get back to town?” 

He left the fireplace and, crossing the room, 
gripped the hand I held out to him in both of his 
own. From the tightness of the grip and a certain 
subdued expression in the blue eyes I knew that the 
news was bad news. 

“I got back to town,” he said, with a feeble effort 
to smile, two days after I left it. Did you ever know 
a young man down there named Hugh Billings ?” 

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WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


For answer I shook my head. 

“Well,” Johnnie went on, “he has a farm a little 
way up the valley from Mrs. Warren’s. He and 
Margaret got married about a month ago. I found 
them all settled down at Jackson’s Farm. Mrs. 
Warren’s getting pretty old, so he’s to run the place 
for her.” 

For lack of something more adequate, I said: “I’m 
sorry, Johnnie. I’m sorry that Margaret didn’t 
wait.” 

“I never asked her to wait,” he said very simply. 
“I took a gambler’s chance. Perhaps if I hadn’t 
wasted my time fooling around here with these skirts 
for the last few months it might have been different. 
But I don’t know that.” 

He shrugged his shoulders and, walking to the 
window, clasped his hands behind his back and stood 
looking out on the pink glow of the dying day. For 
some moments he remained there, and then I went 
over to where he stood and laid my hand on his 
shoulder. 

“Why didn’t you let me know before?” I asked. 
“You’ve been here nearly a month.” 

He turned back to the room and, as if to bring 

189 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


himself back to the consciousness of his surround- 
ings, slightly shook his shoulders. 

“I had some plans I wanted to show you,” he said, 
and nodded his head toward the centre-table which 
was littered with many blue-prints. “But I didn’t 
want you to know anything about it until I had 
things settled. Sit down, won’t you?” 

I sat down in a big armchair near the hearth and 
Johnnie returned to his former stand before the fire- 
place. 

“I don’t speak the English language very well,” 
he began, “but there are two words in it that I always 
had a great hankering for. One was home and the 
other was motherhood.” 

“Both fine words,” I interrupted. 

“I suppose the reason I liked them,” Johnnie 
went on, “was because I never had a home and the 
kind of women I have known looked at motherhood 
with about as much pleasure as they would at a case 
of smallpox. I got to thinking on the train on my 
way back from Virginia and I figured it out about 
like this. I says what possible use is that marble 
palace uptown going to be to me — that is, as things 
have turned out. I’ve got these rooms and, if I do 


190 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


say it, they’re good enough for any bachelor, aren’t 
they ?” 

I promptly admitted that they were. 

“They’re roomy,” Johnnie went on, “and they’re 
cozy, and all the girls and boys are crazy about them. 
So I says, go ahead with the palace uptown, but 
instead of fixing it up inside as a home for me and — 
well, I’ll switch it to a home for women that are 
going to bring children into the world.” 

“A maternity hospital,” I suggested. 

Johnnie nodded. “Yes, that’s what the doctors 
who are getting it up for me wanted to call it, but 
I says ‘No, it’s going to be called Saint Margaret’s 
Home.’ They wanted to call it Saint Margaret’s 
Hospital or just Saint Margaret’s, but I says Saint 
Margaret’s Home, or nothing. It’s to be pretty 
small, but it’s to be the greatest thing of its kind 
in the world. It’s going to be a snowflake on 
a dumping ground for fair, and it’s going to be for 
poor mothers and poor mothers only. And when 
the children are born they’ll have everything around 
’em that money can buy, and, as soon as their eyes 
are open, the first thing they’ll get a flash of will 
be nice white beds and pretty nurses in white caps 
and aprons. They can look out of the windows and 
191 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


see the river, and the ships sailing by, and the men- 
of-war that are always lying at anchor up there, 
and the kids can hear them shooting off their cannon, 
too, when the admirals salute the mayor. And if 
that ain’t a home then I don’t know what is. I tell 
you I haven’t forgotten what the place looked like 
that I was born in, and where my mother died just 
from lack of fresh air, and sunlight, and a little care, 
and something good to eat. Even if the babies do 
have to leave the place pretty soon to make room 
for other mothers and babies, it’ll help their self- 
respect a lot ; they can always go back to that pretty 
marble house and point it out and say that’s the 
home where I was born, and they needn’t be 
ashamed.” 

“And Margaret,” I asked, “have you told her 
yet?” 

Johnnie looked at me in the old, shy way he had 
sometimes when he was telling me what was really 
in his heart, and shook his head. 

“No,” he said, a little reluctantly, “I don’t think 
I’ll tell Margaret.” 

“Why, Johnnie,” I protested, “think how it would 
please her. That’s a wonderful thing in a girl’s life 
to have inspired an idea like that and to know that 
192 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 


she is responsible for all the good and happiness that 
such a home is going to bring to all those mothers 
and little children.” 

But again Johnnie shook his head. 

“It’s hard for me to make you understand,” he 
said, “because it’s hard for me to explain anything 
I really feel. But to me it seems something like this. 
I don’t believe any one woman ever cares for but one 
man, and it’s the same with a man who really loves 
a woman. Margaret cared, and, the Lord knows, 
I cared, too, but I never told her then, and I don’t 
want her ever to know if I can help it. It would 
only make us both unhappy. She can go on with 
her life down there in the old way, and I can live on 
here as I have been living. These rooms are all I’ll 
need.” 

He glanced about at the velvet hangings and the 
bad paintings and vulgar ornaments. “I think these 
rooms are all right, don’t you?” 

“Why, yes, Johnnie,” I lied, “I think they’re fine.” 

“It seems to me,” he added, speaking very slowly, 
“that the case of Margaret and me was just like 
two strangers meeting at a country crossroads, and 
having a friendly chat, and then each going their 
own way It was all so simple and pleasant, down 
193 


WHEN JOHNNIE CAME MARCHING HOME 

there at the farm and — so different. But that has 
nothing to do with my life now, just as hers has 
nothing to do with New York. I tell you, it’s dead. 
It’s a closed incident, as the saying goes.” He 
glanced down at me and then at the open window 
through which there came the confused echoes of the 
roar and rumble of a great city. 

“But it is sort of pleasant in a way,” he went on, 
“to know that that chance meeting down there in 
that clean, decent country, with the fields and the 
mountains all around us, was the reason for that 
little white home uptown rising out of the muck and 
filth of this big, rotten city.” 


194 


“THE PROFESSOR’’ 

The party began at Fabacher’s restaurant and 
was given by Stacy Paget to the exceedingly beauti- 
ful and more or less talented Ivy Hettler. During 
the earlier part of that same evening Miss Hettler 
had graduated from the chorus to the soubrette part 
in “The Maid of Mirth,” and she had taken this 
important step with a degree of success that, to the 
outsider at least, seemed to justify a modest cele- 
bration. However, there were several other girls of 
the company, who happened to be supping that night 
at Fabacher’s, to whom Ivy Hettler’s promotion was 
regarded not only as undeserved but in the light of 
an ordinary scandal. Furthermore, they did not 
hesitate to show their feelings by casting significant 
glances in the direction of Stacy Paget and the nu- 
merous bottles of champagne that he was opening in 
honor of his new soubrette. 

Irene Earle, who was one of a large party sitting 

195 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


but a few tables distant, shut the metal lid of her 
beer mug with a vicious snap and shoved it halfway 
across the polished table. 

“Just look at the way Ivy’s sipping her wine,” 
she sneered. “You’d think she was afraid the bubbles 
were going to bite her. There’s a fine soubrette for 
you — I don't think. I know about eight of our girls 
who can sing and dance and read lines all around 
that kid. Of all ” 

“What gets my goat,” Marie Le Moyne inter- 
rupted, “is that Ivy should have played the wide-eyed 
innocent child half the season and then copped out 
the manager. If it had been a chorus man or even 
the tenor, I wouldn’t have cared.” 

Edna Clark rapped her beer mug on the table to 
attract the attention of a passing waiter, and glanced 
over her shoulder in the direction of the manager’s 
supper party. 

“It’s a rotten shame, if you ask me,” she said, 
turning back her large bovine eyes to the men and 
women at her own table, “a rotten shame. Some of 
these days Stacy Paget’ll make a play for a girl 
who’s got a brother or a sweetheart with red blood 
in him, and then there’ll be one more good girl in the 
show business and one less manager.” 

196 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


The other women about the table, each according 
to her own moral viewpoint, shrugged their shoulders 
or nodded their approval, and then every one ordered 
more beer from the patient waiter. 

In the natural course of events, and according to 
the most firmly established traditions of New Orleans 
sporting life, Irene Earle, Marie Le Moyne, Edna 
Clark, and the other girls from “The Maid of Mirth,” 
as well as the young men who were acting as their 
hosts, eventually left Fabacher’s in pursuit of the 
real entertainment of the night. Half a dozen taxi- 
cabs jolted them over the rough stone pavements and 
through the narrow, dimly lighted streets to the side 
door of the Oriental Cafe, where the already hilari- 
ous party of pleasure seekers was received with 
clamorous delight. 

The back room of the Oriental was a little larger 
and a trifle cleaner than the other and less success- 
ful resorts of its kind in the neighborhood. The 
floor was bare, the maroon tinted walls were decor- 
ated with a few fly- specked prints of former gladia- 
tors of the roped arena or past equine heroes of the 
turf, and the centre of the low, smoke-begrimed ceil- 
ing was enlivened by a large and exceedingly crude 
painting of scarlet roses and amorous pink cupids. 
197 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


At the far end of the long, narrow room there was 
a small raised platform which served as a stage. On 
this there was an upright piano and a table, on which 
were placed a drum, a trombone, and several other 
sadly dilapidated instruments used by the performers 
when rendering “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and 
other ballads of a similarly hilarious nature. 

The three professional artists who were regularly 
employed by the management of the cafe were Ed- 
die Windle, commonly known as “The Professor,” 
who played the accompaniments for the two other 
young men as well as for any artist in the audience 
who wished to contribute a song to the general gayety 
of the night. The two young men who sang pro- 
fessionally and who held the exclusive privilege of 
periodically passing the hat among their delighted 
auditors were the Allen Brothers, specimens of a 
wholly depraved type usually to be found about the 
sporting resorts of any large city. Both young men 
were always neatly dressed, brisk of manner, spoke 
a jargon of slang all of their own, and were wonder- 
fully wise in knowing how to extract from the un- 
worldly the greatest amount of money possible with 
the least personal effort. The difference between 
these two noisy, fatuous youths and the Professor 
198 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


is not easy to define, and yet there was a subtle dif- 
ference which never failed to impress itself on any 
one who spent a night at the Oriental Cafe. 

The Professor was quite as youthful as his fellow 
workers, and, from all appearances, just as knowing 
in the ways of the underworld in which he lived. But 
whether it was that he lacked the convivial spirits 
of the other two or was palpably short of physical 
charm, there can be no question that he was seldom 
asked to drink with a party in the audience, and 
was under no condition permitted by his brother 
artists to pass around the hat. He was a tall, spare 
young man, with slightly stooping shoulders, big 
gray eyes, and an unhappy, discontented look in 
them, which could be seen when he occasionally turned 
them toward the audience. Perhaps it was this or 
perhaps it was his blond hair parted neatly in the 
centre, and his pink and white coloring, and the weak, 
sensitive mouth from which there always hung a 
half-lighted cigarette, or perhaps again it was his 
shy and taciturn manner, but certainly one or all of 
these things combined to set him apart and cause 
the visitors to the Oriental to regard him as curiously 
out of place in his present surroundings. 

But if the Professor’s personality did not seem to 

199 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


belong to the place, he nevertheless occupied a most 
important part in its nightly programme. Not only 
did he play the accompaniments for the other artists, 
but at somewhat lengthy intervals throughout the 
night he contributed a song of an entirely differ- 
ent character from the noisy efforts of the Allen 
Brothers. These songs of the Professor were in- 
variably sentimental, often pathetic, and their sub- 
jects were the deserted home, the dying soldier-hero, 
the wayward daughter, and particularly the aged 
mother. With what had been once an apparently 
good, if untrained, tenor voice, Eddie Windle, sitting 
at the piano, gazing up at the grimy ceiling, sang 
these doleful ditties, and it must be said to his credit 
that they were invariably received by the patrons 
of the Oriental with the most marked signs of ap- 
proval. It may have been the highly moral sentiment 
of the songs, or it may have been the feeling with 
which he rendered their homely words, but certain 
it is that when the Professor sang “Her Hobo Son,” 
or “The Girl I Loved,” or “Dream Days,” or “Little 
Girlie Mine,” the audience was not only always re- 
spectfully silent, but during the very early hours of 
the morning frequently reduced to a state of maud- 
lin tearfulness. 


200 


“THE PROFESSOR” 

Very much in the spirit of a sight-seeing or slum- 
ming party, Stacy Paget and his friends eventually 
arrived at the Oriental Cafe and were shown to a 
table not far from the little stage. The Allen Broth- 
ers were, for the third time that evening, rendering 
“The Raggiest Rag,” and while Eddie Windle re- 
mained at the piano the two brothers, accompanied 
by Irene Earle, Marie Le Moyne, and several other 
girls from “The Maid of Mirth” company were 
marching in single file between the tables, beating 
drums, blowing horns, or singing loudly as they 
continued on their joyous parade up and down the 
room. Eddie Windle was, as usual, gazing absently 
at a spot on the ceiling, just over the piano, and 
therefore failed to notice the arrival of the new- 
comers. But when Ivy Hettler first saw the Pro- 
fessor she turned quite white, and her soft, pretty 
hands suddenly gathered tightly about the thick 
stem of the as yet empty wineglass that stood before 
her. When the song was over, Windle swung slowly 
about on the piano stool and, with his usually taci- 
turn and disinterested manner, gazed at the noisy 
crowd beating beer mugs on the tables and shouting 
uproariously for an encore. And then his glance 
shifted and his eyes met those of Ivy Hettler. If 
201 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


he recognized the girl no one would have known it, 
for his face remained the same meaningless pink and 
white mask. Once more he swung about on the piano 
stool, and, picking up his cigarette, lighted it and 
blew a series of gray wavering rings of smoke at the 
ceiling. 

“Sing ‘The Village Green,’ Professor,” some one 
shouted, and another voice farther back in the hall 
called: “No, Eddie, make it ‘Dream Days.’” 

By way of reply, the Professor played a few stray 
chords and then slowly turned his big gray eyes, 
and for a moment allowed them to rest on Ivy Hettler 
and Stacy Paget. The manager had indulged in the 
almost unknown luxury at the Oriental of ordering 
champagne, and the habitues did not wonder that the 
incident should have attracted the momentary atten- 
tion of the piano player. The song which Eddie 
Windle played on this occasion was quite new to 
the Oriental’s audience and a new song by the Pro- 
fessor was always an event of no mean importance. 
It was a very simple song, largely recitative; the 
lyrics were ungrammatical and the meter was dis- 
tinctly faulty. The whole thing was commonplace, 
even banal. The title of the ballad was “She’s Any- 
one’s Little Girlie Now but Mine,” and it was all 
202 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


about a boy and a girl who had grown up together 
in a little country town and had gone to school to- 
gether and played together and fought their childish 
battles for each other. Then the boy went away to 
seek his fortune in the city, but she always remained 
his little girl. That is, she did until one night when 
he chanced to meet her under most unhappy condi- 
tions. Because it seems that she, too, having grown 
tired of the little town and of waiting for her sweet- 
heart, had come to the big city. And then, after the 
meeting, according to the refrain of this homely tale, 
she was any one’s little girl but his. 

A complete and most flattering silence greeted the 
conclusion of the ballad. One of the girls from the 
district sniffed audibly, and Irene Earle fearlessly 
dabbed her moist eyes several times with a small lace 
handkerchief. Stacy Paget leaned his heavy body 
forward, and with his fat chin sunk between his palms 
and his elbows resting upon the table, gazed steadily 
at the Professor, who was again sitting idly at the 
piano and once more blowing cigarette rings at the 
dirty ceiling. 

“Well, he got to me,” the manager muttered. 
“That may be cheap stuff, but it got under my vest 
all right.” 


203 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


With an ever ready eye to the main chance, the 
Allen Brothers were quick to take advantage of 
Windle’s success and hurriedly began to pass around 
their hats among the audience. After the collection 
had been made, the brothers were joined by the Pro- 
fessor and they adjourned to the barroom to count 
their earnings. When the contributions had been 
dumped on the table, the first thing that caught the 
eyes of all the three men among the mass of dollar 
bills and silver was a small envelope. 

Bud Allen, the elder of the brothers, picked it up 
and, having deftly felt the enclosure with his finger 
tips, whistled softly. 

“Well, what do you think of that?” he gasped. “I 
saw the skirt that put that in and I thought it was 
a joke, but it ain’t no joke — it’s her pay envelope.” 
Raising the envelope to the light, he read aloud the 
name written across it: “Ivy Hettler.” Then he 
started to tear it open, but Eddie Windle suddenly 
shot out his hand. 

“Don’t you open that, Bud,” he whispered fiercely. 
“Don’t you dare!” 

Allen’s hand closed tight about the prize. 

“Don’t open it!” he repeated. “Why, she’s one 
of those girls from the show at the Dauphine. There 
204 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


must be twenty-five in it anyway. I guess you’re 
crazy, ain’t you, Eddie?” 

Windle leaned far across the table, and in the Pro- 
fessor’s eyes Bud Allen saw a light that he had never 
remembered to have seen there before. 

“No,” Windle said, speaking very quietly, “I’m 
not crazy. You take that envelope back and give 
it to the girl that put it in the hat, and do it now! 
Do you get me?” 

With a reluctant shrug of his shoulders, Bud Allen 
got up from the table. “All right,” he grumbled; 
“I guess it was that last song of yours that drew 
it anyhow.” He interrupted himself with a chuckle 
and an appreciative wag of his head, and added: 
“And let me tell you, Eddie boy, that was some 
song.” 

The pale lips of the Professor broke into the sem- 
blance of a smile. “Thank you, Bud. And, I say, 
give me that envelope for a moment, will you?” 

Allen handed it to him, and with a pencil Windle 
scribbled a few words just under the girl’s name. 

“When you give her this,” he said, “let her see 
there’s some writing on it, but don’t let the others 
get wise.” 

It was during this absence of the three young men 

205 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


from the concert room that Stacy Paget conceived 
a thought which immediately impressed him as a 
most masterly and in all probability a valuable one. 

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, suddenly turning to 
Ivy and speaking in a low voice so that the rest of 
his party could not hear, “I’ve got a great idea. 
That last scene in our show is no good and never 
was. Why not make it an interior instead of the 
outside of the cafe and give a reproduction of a 
show like this. I could get this boy to play the 
piano and sing, and some of our girls could do their 
stunts and supply the local color. They certainly 
seem to act as if they knew all about it.” 

Paget’s brain was still busy with this new idea, 
when a few minutes later Ivy Hettler excused herself 
on the plea that she wished to speak to some of the 
girls in the back of the hall. In the confusion that 
reigned throughout the crowded room, it was not 
difficult for her to slip unnoticed through the side 
door to the street. 

When she saw the tall, lank figure of Eddie 
Windle, she gave a little cry of happiness and ran 
toward him with her hands held out before her, but 
the pleasure of the meeting seemed to be all with 
the girl. 


206 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


“Not yet, Ivy,” he said, keeping his hands stuck 
deep in his coat pockets. “Not just yet. I’ve got 
to have a few words with you first. There’s some- 
thing I want to ask you.” 

The girl looked at him with wide open eyes of 
wonder and disappointment. “Why, Eddie,” she 
gasped, “I don’t understand you at all. Why didn’t 
you recognize me in there, and what did you mean by 
that song, anyhow? My, Eddie,” and her eyes were 
smiling again with real enthusiasm, “but you did 
get it over, though. It was great and Paget wants 
to engage you to go with our show and sing it in a 
cabaret scene. Wouldn’t that be fine?” 

By way of answer, Windle took Ivy by the arm 
and started to lead her across the street. 

“Let’s go to Siebert’s place,” he said. “We can 
talk better there. It’s a dance hall. Do you know 
it?” 

Ivy shook her head. “Is it respectable?” she 
asked. 

“Respectable enough, and besides, it’s just around 
the corner.” 

Ivy made a feeble effort to hold back, but Windle 
hurried her across the street. 

207 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


“Won’t they need you at the piano back there?” 
she asked. 

“No, not for a while. The boys have some songs 
they can do without me.” 

In a few minutes more they were at Siebert’s, 
seated at a little table, shut off from the big dancing 
room by a lattice screen. Near them a woman was 
making love to a tipsy sailor, but otherwise they 
were quite alone. Beyond the screen a colored brass 
band was blaring out a waltz, and a hundred women 
from the district and as many of their men friends 
were moving slowly up and down the long smoke- 
befogged room in an exaggerated form of the 
Grizzly Bear. 

“Well,” Ivy asked, “why did you bring me here? 
You must have had a good reason, Eddie — a mighty 
good reason.” 

The Professor folded his arms before him on the 
table and looked the girl evenly in the eyes. 

“Yes, Ivy,” he said, speaking very slowly and very 
gently. “I think I have a good reason. I was talk- 
ing to some of your girls last night at the Oriental, 
and they were telling me about you being promoted, 
and that you rehearsed pretty badly in the part, 
and that you got your rise through Paget, and that 
208 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


you didn’t deserve it anyhow. It wasn’t very nice 
talk, but, you see, they didn’t know I knew you or 
that we’d grown up in the same town. You see, I 
say, they didn’t know all about that, and so they 
talked pretty free.” 

Ivy gave a little toss to her chin, and, with angry, 
unseeing eyes, she stared at the bare wall across the 
room. 

“So I 9 m any one’s little girlie now but yours. Is 
that it?” 

The Professor nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I guess 
that’s about it. Leastwise, it was what those girls 
said or as much as said. That’s why I wanted to 
see you to-night. Ivy, you never lied to me in the 
old days — never.” 

Ivy turned back her blue eyes toward him, and 
he saw that all the fire and the resentment had gone 
out of them, and in their place there had come a 
look of infinite weariness. 

“That’s right, Eddie,” she said, and she spoke 
quite calmly again, “that’s right. I never lied to 
you and I never could. Not to you. It wouldn’t 
somehow be right after all you did for me at home 
and always so good to me and wanting me to marry 
209 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


you and all that. No, Eddie, I’m telling you the 
truth — the girls were wrong.” 

Windle suddenly tossed up his head and gave a 
sharp gasp of wonderful content. His face fairly 
shone with happiness now, and quickly putting out 
his hand, he took one of the girl’s in it and held it 
tightly. But for some reason that he could not for 
the moment understand, Ivy seemed to resent this 
and slowly wrenched her hand free. She looked out 
through the lattice screen at the crowd of dancers 
revolving slowly about the big hall, and then she 
looked back at Windle’s questioning eyes and drew 
her thin pretty lips into a straight hard line. 

When she spoke, her voice was quite colorless and 
apparently without feeling of any kind. 

“I said,” she began, “that the girls were wrong. 
I’ll try to explain ” 

The look of happiness had suddenly faded from 
the Professor’s face. 

“That’s it,” he interrupted her, “that’s it. I 
wish you would explain. I’m afraid I don’t quite 
understand.” 

Ivy’s lips broke into a little wavering smile, but 
there was no smile in her eyes. 

“It’s not very difficult to understand. It ought 

210 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


to be pretty easy for a man like you who has been 
mixed up in theatrical business, who works in a back- 
room show. I’ve had a lot of men in love with me 
and some of them had money, too, but Stacy Paget 
is the one man I know who is in love with me and 
who happens to be in the position to give me the 
chance I want.” 

“Why, Ivy,” Windle gasped, “you don’t know 
what you’re saying. You’re crazy.” 

The girl shook her head, and again her lips broke 
into the same mirthless smile. 

“No, I’m not crazy. It’s this way, Eddie. I’ve 
tried to get along and be decent, as — as you would 
have me. I’ve worked and I’ve worked and I’ve 
struggled to get out of the chorus, but I just 
couldn’t do it. I saw girls getting ahead of me that 
didn’t have half of my talent or half of my ambition, 
but they did have a man friend who cared enough 
and was in the position to give them a chance. 
What’s the use! — you know this business. Stacy 
Paget is the first man of this kind that ever came 
my way and very probably he’ll be the last, and I 
can’t throw away the only chance I may ever get. 
I can’t do it.” 


211 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


Ivy clasped her hands before her on the table and 
stared hard into Windle’s frightened eyes. 

“Can’t you understand, Eddie,” she begged. 
“Don’t make it any harder for me than it is. Don’t 
you suppose I’ve suffered, too? It’s been no fun for 
me, believe me. Do you think I like to have these 
other women in the company point at me and talk 
about me as they talked about me to you last night? 
But I tell you, he gave me my chance. He’s going 
to do a world of things for me in the future, and 
he’s the only one that could or would.” 

The girl’s manner suddenly changed to one of 
great animation and eagerness, and she leaned far 
across the table. “And he’ll do wonders for you, 
too, Eddie. I told you how he wanted you to go 
with the show and do your specialty.” 

Windle nodded gravely, and taking out a package 
of cigarettes from his coat pocket lighted one and 
blew clouds of smoke up at the ceiling, just as he did 
when he was at the piano at the Oriental. For a 
few moments there was silence and then the boy, 
for he was really only a boy, pushed his chair from 
the table and stood looking down at Ivy. 

“You poor, lonely kid,” he said, “I’ve got to look 
out for you somehow, if only for the sake of old 
212 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


times, but I don’t know how to do it. That’s the 
trouble, Ivy dear, I don’t know just how to do it.” 

The girl smiled and sprang to her feet. 

“That’s all right, Eddie,” she laughed, “you’ll 
have a talk with Paget, won’t you? Promise me 
you will?” 

“Yes,” Windle said, “I’ll have a talk with Paget. 
I’ll promise you that.” 

It was some time later that night at the Oriental, 
or rather during the early morning hours, when the 
manager had his first opportunity to speak to Windle 
alone. The Professor had finished singing and was 
sitting by himself at a table at the far end of the 
room when Paget joined him and, without any waste 
of time in preliminaries, at once told him of his 
scheme to introduce the back-room scene in his 
musical comedy. 

“I’d like to talk business with you,” Windle said> 
“but I can’t do it here. I’m tied up with these 
people, and if they thought I was going to jump 
them for a better job they’d make trouble. They’re 
pretty tough folks to deal with. The boss is looking 
at us now.” 

Paget nodded. “All right,” he said, “I’ll meet 
you anywhere you say, but make it soon.” 

213 


“THE PROFESSOR” 

For a few moments the Professor remained silent, 
apparently thinking it over. 

“The show ought to be finished in half an hour,” 
he said at last. “If you could send your party 
home, I might meet you near here at my room. It’s 
on a nice quiet street, two blocks south — just across 
the railroad tracks. The street has four rows of 
trees on it, and it’s very broad. You can’t miss it. 
When you reach the corner turn to your left. I’ll 
meet you at my door.” 

“Aren’t you making a good deal of mystery out 
of a little business talk?” Paget asked. 

Windle leaned across the table. 

“You don’t understand the kind of people I’m 
working for,” he whispered. “You can take it or 
leave it. I’m not so keen about the job anyhow.” 

Paget shrugged his shoulders. 

“All right,” he said, “I’ll be there. I suppose it’s 
safe down here for a man to walk the streets alone 
this time of night.” 

Windle smiled. “Safe,” he repeated. “Why, the 
district is as safe at night as Broadway and Forty- 
second Street is at noon. Have you told the folks 
at your table about this?” 

Paget shook his head. “Only one of them.” 

214 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


“All right,” Windle said. “Don’t tell the others 
till I do my getaway. Actors are a gabby lot.” 

The crowd at the Oriental gradually dwindled 
away, and when the Professor closed the top of the 
piano with a conspicuous bang, all that remained 
of the audience straggled out of the hot, smoky 
room into the clear night air and the moonlit streets. 
Paget put his friends into a taxicab and then started 
to walk slowly to his meeting-place with Windle. 

The Professor left the Oriental by the barrtjom 
entrance, and, once clear of the place, started with 
long swinging strides toward his destination. By a 
circuitous route he reached the corner of the street 
with the four rows of trees some time before Paget, 
but in the distance he could see the bulky form of 
the manager coming slowly toward him. Then he 
hurried along the broad avenue until he had found 
an open vestibule that offered him ample protection 
for his purpose. 

Save for the footfalls of the approaching Paget 
it was quite silent now, for the denizens of the dis- 
trict had gone to their beds after the long night of 
debauch. It was almost as light as day — every crack 
in the broad, stone pavements and every twig of the 
spreading trees stood out in bold, black relief against 
215 


“THE PROFESSOR” 

the pure white moonlight. Paget glanced up at the 
gray and pink plaster dwellings, with their closed 
shutters and rusted iron balconies and overhanging 
roofs. To the manager every house looked gloomy 
and foreboding; the whole scene seemed somehow 
fraught with mystery and to portend disaster, and 
he keenly regretted that he had ever come. But now 
he was almost at his destination, and at the sight 
of the broad street, with its four rows of spreading 
trees, he hurried on to find Windle. Hidden in the 
doorway, the Professor crouched and waited, listen- 
ing to the oncoming footsteps, which now rang out 
through the clear night air with an almost metallic 
distinctness. The dark vestibule had suddenly be- 
come very close and the Professor’s brow dripped 
with great beads of perspiration. With one hand 
he took off his felt hat and threw it sharply from 
him, while the fingers of the other gripped more 
tightly a long, bone-handled pocket-knife. The steps 
were almost opposite the doorway now and, in the 
brilliant moonlight, the Professor could see the eyes 
of Paget peering nervously into the shadows of the 
vestibule. And then a long, lean body hurled itself 
from the darkened doorway into the searching white 
light of the street and the blade of a knife whipped 
216 


“THE PROFESSOR” 


through the still air. Three times it flashed and fell. 

On the following Monday night “The Maid of 
Mirth” played at Montgomery, but Ivy Hettler was 
no longer the soubrette of the company. The man- 
ager who had succeeded Stacy Paget did not like her 
in the part and hence recalled the girl who had orig- 
inally played it, and put Ivy back in the chorus. 
The same Monday night found the Professor on one 
of those antiquated and lawless side-wheel show boats 
which still work up and down the river, stopping 
every evening at a different town and giving a vaude- 
ville performance simply as a subterfuge to sell rum 
to the colored people and the poor white trash. On 
four occasions during the evening the Professor sang 
his sentimental ballads. But for the remainder of 
the time he lay on his back in the shadow of the 
deck-house staring up at the purple sky and blowing 
rings of cigarette smoke at a crystal star. 


217 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 

As if to delay the pleasure of his home-coming 
Tolliver hesitated at the gate and glanced back down 
the broad street with its rows of leafy elms and grass- 
lined walks. He was smiling as he came up the path- 
way, and when he had reached the bend and saw that 
his wife was waiting for him on the porch, he stopped 
before a rose-bush and having cut a full-blown rose 
carried it to her. She pinned the flower in the folds 
of her cool white dress and putting her hands on his 
shoulders kissed him on his damp forehead. 

“Oh, Bruce, dear,” she laughed, “you’re so hot, 
and you’re very late, too. I wish you wouldn’t walk 
so fast from town.” 

“I know I’m late, dear, very late, but we’ve been 
having a long, serious, happy business talk at the 
office and I wanted to tell you all about it at once.” 

In his boyish excitement he clasped his fingers 
tightly about his wife’s wrist and led her toward the 
front door. 


218 


THE TWENTY -FIRST REASON 


“We can’t go into the library,” she said, “the 
children are there.” 

“The children?” he repeated. 

“Yes, Alice and Tommy Leonard.” 

“Of course,” he said, “I didn’t understand. We’ll 
go up to your room. Oh, Helen, it’s such wonderful 
news.” 

He sank into a low chair filled with chintz-covered 
cushions, and Mrs. Tolliver dropped down before 
him and, leaning her elbows on his knees, rested her 
chin between her palms. They had been married now 
almost twenty years and her figure was just as lithe, 
her face as fair, and her smile just as winsome and 
joyous as on the day of their wedding. For twenty 
years they had been sweethearts. 

“Now, Bruce,” she said, “I’m quite ready. Tell 
me the wonderful news.” 

Tolliver drew a long breath and began: “The 
boys,” — Tolliver always referred to the members of 
the firm that employed him as “the boys” — “it seems, 
got together and decided to give us a present to 
celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the day I 
first went with them — a present that would really 
be a present. Guess!” 


219 


“Bruce,” Mrs. Tolliver exclaimed, “tell me at once. 
I can’t wait to guess. What is it?” 

“A year in Europe.” 

Mrs. Tolliver drew back and gazed at her husband 
with wide-open eyes. “A year in Europe,” she 
gasped. 

“Exactly — that’s it. One year in Europe with 
full pay.” And then the tension broke and Helen 
Tolliver buried her head in the folds of Bruce’s coat. 
It was some minutes later when she looked up and 
smiled through dimmed eyes into those of her hus- 
band. 

“Don’t think I’m crying,” she stammered, “just 
because we are to have a year abroad. It’s because 
they understand and appreciate all that you have 
done for them.” 

Tolliver nodded. “I know, Helen, dear. For 
twenty-five long years we’ve worked pretty hard — 
you and I.” 

“I!” Helen protested. 

“Yes, you. Many’s the time I think I would have 
quit the grind if you hadn’t kept me going. And 
I tell you, I’m pretty tired — pretty nearly all in. 
But now in a few months we’ll be free — free for a 
whole year. Think of it, Helen! Italy and the 
220 



She pinned the flower in the folds of her cool white dress. 































































































THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


French cathedrals and Paris — think of it — Paris, 
Paris ! How Alice will love it! I wish that boy 
downstairs would go home and we could tell her 
now.” 

“Alice,” Mrs. Tolliver repeated — “Alice.” 

“Of course, Alice. We couldn’t go without Alice, 
could we? She’s going to be more than half the fun.” 

With a quick movement Helen pulled herself to 
her feet and stood before her husband, nervously 
drawing her handkerchief with one hand through the 
fingers of the other. 

“You see, Bruce,” she whispered, “you see Alice 
can’t go. Alice — I wanted to tell you on the porch, 
but you were so full of this trip abroad — you see, 
Alice is engaged.” 

Tolliver stared at his wife with wide-eyed surprise. 
“Engaged,” he repeated. 

“Yes — to Tommy Leonard. It’s all arranged, 
and I promised them that I would break the news 
to you. You’re not angry, are you, Bruce? They’re 
so happy and Tommy is such a nice boy.” 

Tolliver pulled himself out of the chair and walked 
over to the bay window. For some moments he stood 
looking out on the close-cropped lawn, the neatly 
trimmed hedge, and the flowering rose-bushes. Then 
221 


THE TWENTY -FIRST REASON 


he turned to his wife and smiled at her, but she saw 
that in those few moments his face had suddenly 
become drawn and that there was no smile in his 
eyes. 

“Why, that’s all right, I suppose,” he said. “It's 
just a little sudden, and — and unexpected. Alice 
always seems such a child to me, but I imagine that’s 
the way with all fathers.” 

“And all mothers, too,” Mrs. Tolliver added. 
“But you must remember Alice is almost nineteen 
now.” 

Tolliver nodded, and after a moment’s silence went 
on speaking again. “There was another proposition 
the firm made me. They said in case I didn’t care 
to go abroad that I could keep right on and that 
they would give me five thousand dollars in place of 
the trip. They didn’t care, you understand, what I 
did, so long as they rewarded me for the twenty-five 
years of work.” 

“But, Bruce, dear,” Helen protested eagerly, “you 
don’t mean that you are thinking of giving up the 
trip abroad because Alice is going to be married. 
Just as soon as the wedding is over you and I will 
start out on our second honeymoon and this one will 
last a whole long year.” 


222 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


Tolliver moved away from the window and sat 
down again in the deep-cushioned chair. “Come over 
here, Helen,” he said, “and let’s talk it over.” 

She sat at his feet and, with her elbow resting on 
his knee, nestled the mass of soft blond curls in the 
bend of her arm. “Now, Bruce,” she said, “please 
go on.” 

“Well,” Tolliver began, “I confess it’s a bit of a 
shock to me. If it had been Peter Wood or Harry 
Howland I wouldn’t have been surprised.” 

“Harry Howland !” Mrs. Tolliver protested. 
“Harry Howland wouldn’t propose to the loveliest 
girl that ever breathed. He’s too selfish.” 

“I wonder. It was just the other afternoon out 
on the golf club porch that he was talking to a lot of 
us old fellows on this very subject of the high cost of 
marriage, and it seemed to me that there was a good 
deal of common-sense in what he said. He claimed 
that the bachelor of moderate means was not selfish, 
because, in not marrying, he deliberately gave up 
the chance of the only perfectly happy, well-rounded 
life a man could enjoy in this world.” 

“Then why does he choose to remain a bachelor?” 
Helen snapped. “There’s plenty of girls would 
marry Harry if he’d only ask them.” 

223 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


“Because he claimed that it was not fair to the 
parents — he argued that just at the time when the 
fathers and mothers had reached the age when the 
steam begins to give out and had saved enough to 
make the future a little easier, their children, who 
were wholly ignorant of the cost of living, started 
in to raise another set of mouths and stomachs for 
the old folks to feed. Harry claimed that the Coun- 
try Club was entirely composed of old men who 
could only afford to play with old chipped and 
cracked golf balls because they needed the money 
for sterilized milk and trained nurses for their grand- 
children.” 

Mrs. Tolliver turned and looked her husband 
evenly in the eyes. “I have my opinion of any 
woman who really loved a man and wouldn’t marry 
him if he couldn’t guarantee her anything but bread 
and cheese and kisses.” 

“That’s the way it used to be,” Tolliver laughed, 
“but now they’ve reversed that old saying; it’s 
kisses and bread and cheese. They get married and 
make sure that the Church and the State legalize 
the kisses and then take a chance on the bread and 
cheese.” 

“And if they do,” demanded Helen, “and 
224 


are 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 

satisfied with the kisses and bread and cheese, as you 
put it . . . ?” 

“But that’s just the trouble — they’re not satis- 
fied, because Jones, who knew them before the mar- 
riage and who is rich, asks them out to dinner once 
so often and gives them caviare and vintage wines. 
And even if Jones doesn’t ask them out and make 
them miserable, how about the new babies? The 
huskiest baby in the world can’t digest bread and 
cheese, and it’s a well-known fact that all babies hate 
to be kissed.” 

Mrs. Tolliver pulled herself to her feet and, with 
her pink-and-white face greatly flushed, faced her 
husband. 

“Then,” she demanded, “you refuse your consent 
to Alice’s marriage to Tommy?” 

“Not at all,” Tolliver said. “Ask them to come 
up. Let’s talk it over.” 

Tommy Leonard, an ex-college athlete of the 
Greek-god type, six feet and no waist line, and Alice 
Tolliver, a pale, exquisitely frail replica of her blond 
pretty mother, stood hand in hand in the doorway. 

“Come in,” called Tolliver cheerily. 

Greatly relieved at this unexpected and wholly 

225 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


genial greeting, the two young people fairly flew 
across the room to receive the parental blessing. 

“Not yet, not quite yet,” Tolliver laughed and 
waved them back. “You two sit down on that lounge 
and we’ll all thresh this thing out together.” 

The happy smiles suddenly faded from the faces 
of Tommy and Alice, and side by side, they reluc- 
tantly took their places on the sofa and cast gloomy 
glances in the direction of Mr. and Mrs. Tolliver. 

“In the first place,” Tolliver began, “on what do 
you two expect to live?” 

Once more the faces of the young people broke 
into the most cheerful smiles, and Alice fairly laughed 
aloud. “Is that all?” she gurgled. “Oh, daddy, I 
was afraid it was something really serious and 
unpleasant.” 

Tolliver drew his lips into a straight line and 
glanced in the direction of the prospective bride- 
groom. 

“We’ve gone over the matter pretty carefully, 
sir,” Leonard began, “and we believe that we can 
live, and live pretty well, on my present income ; and, 
of course, my salary will be increased from time to 
time.” 

“I’m glad that you are not counting too strongly,” 

226 



In the first place,” Tolliver began, “ on what do you 
two expect to live ? ” 
















• . 












. 
































THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


Tolliver said, “on these occasional increases in jour 
wages. The directors of banks in small towns are 
not usually given to raising the salary of their pay- 
ing tellers with any great frequency and, believe me, 
Tommy, there is a limit and the limit is not a very 
high one. Without capital I fear you will find it 
difficult to make money on the side and, to be quite 
frank, I don’t know where the capital is coming from. 
If I were a millionnaire I’d willingly hand over half 
of it to Alice to-morrow — that is, if I thought it 
would make her happy, but I’m not a millionnaire. 
I could do very little to help you.” 

With her blue eyes ablaze, Alice sat forward on 
the sofa and looked her father fairly in his now 
serious face. 

“There is one thing, father,” she began most im- 
pressively, “that I want you to understand at the 
start. Tommy and I do not expect or want any 
kind of help from you. We have already agreed 
that rather than go to you, Tommy would be a 
policeman and I would scrub floors. Not that I 
don’t appreciate how kind and good you are, but we, 
both of us, understand your circumstances, just as 
we understand our own. We have gone into every 
detail and have thought of every expense.” 

227 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


A blush of motherly pride spread over the delicate 
features of Mrs. Tolliver, and she glanced admir- 
ingly at her daughter. 

“You must remember, Bruce,” she said, “that 
Alice is not without practical experience. You know 
how well she kept house for us when I was ill last 
winter.” 

“Really, Mr. Tolliver,” Leonard insisted, “I’m 
sure we could do it. We wouldn’t think of marriage 
unless we had considered every contingency.” 

Tolliver stuck his hands deep into his trouser 
pockets, pursed his lips, and glanced in turn at his 
wife and daughter and then at Leonard. “I’ll tell 
you three a story,” he said. “It’s a story of the 
race-track, but I think it rather applies to this case. 
One day a race was just about to start and the owner 
of the favorite was standing on the lawn watching 
the horses which were already at the post. A very 
excited young man who had bet on the favorite ran 
up to the owner and said: ‘I’ve bet on your horse. 
He’s bound to win, don’t you think so?’ The owner 
kept his field glasses on the horses and replied to the 
young man, ‘No, I shouldn’t think so.’ ‘Why not?’ 
gasped the young man, who was very much surprised. 
‘There are just twenty reasons,’ the owner said, ‘why 
228 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


my horse should not win. He may be left at the 
post, or he may stumble, or he may put his foot in 
a hole and break his leg, or the jockey may break 
his stirrup, or his weights may fall out, or — ’ Just 
then the horses started, and the favorite, who was 
on the outside, cut across the track, got jammed 
against the rail by the other horses, and the jockey 
was thrown over the fence and ignominiously landed 
in the infield. The owner put away his glasses and 
turning to the young man said: ‘I never saw that 
happen before. It seems that there are twenty-one 
reasons.’ ” For some moments there was silence and 
then Tolliver continued : “From my experience I have 
found that it is the twenty-first reason that makes 
the best-laid schemes gang aft a-gley, and causes 
most of the trouble in this world. The jockeys who 
ride our favorite hobbies are always being thrown 
over the fence or doing some foolish thing that we 
hadn’t expected and hadn’t prepared for.” 

Whereat Alice Tolliver suddenly broke into peals 
of laughter and clapped her hands from sheer youth- 
ful pleasure. “But, daddy, we have prepared for the 
twenty-first reason. We thought of it after we had 
everything arranged for, and we call it the contin- 
gency fund. We took it from our Christmas and 
229 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


anniversary gift expenses and Tommy will not take 
out as much life-insurance as he had intended. So 
you see we have prepared for the unexpected, don’t 
you, daddy?” 

Tolliver smiled wearily and slowly nodded his 
assent. “Yes, I see,” he said, “and I only hope that 
your matrimonial hooks will balance at the end of 
the first year. If your mother says ‘yes’ you have 
my permission. I have never denied her anything 
yet, have I, my dear?” 

Helen Tolliver, whose emotions had been consider- 
ably stirred, came to her husband’s side and, bury- 
ing her head on his shoulder, tearfully admitted that 
he never had. Thus it was that Alice Tolliver and 
Tommy Leonard were officially betrothed. 

It was agreed that the wedding should take place 
on the first day of October, and that just one week 
later Mr. and Mrs. Tolliver should start forth on 
their second honeymoon and for their first sight of 
the purple skies and the gray-green hills of Italy and 
the Riviera. Those were busy days for the Tolliver 
family — the combination of the marriage of an only 
child and the first trip abroad was indeed a serious 
one, especially as the trip was for a whole year and 
230 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


the marriage, if one could judge by the devotion of 
the young couple to each other, at least a journey 
for life. The little suburban town was fairly agog 
with excitement, for marriages among its prominent 
citizens were none too frequent and few were better 
known or better liked than the Tollivers. The great 
day dawned at last, and the air was filled with the 
orange sunlight and the cool, crisp breezes of the 
early Autumn. It was in all ways a day long to be 
remembered and talked over for years to come by the 
gossips of the town. From the early gathering of 
the guests at the pretty little ivy-covered church 
until their departure down the rice-covered steps of 
the bride’s home, late the same afternoon, surely 
nature and the Tollivers had done their best and 
their best had proved most bountiful indeed. 

“And now,” said Tolliver to Mrs. Tolliver, as the 
last frock-coated guest waved his silk hat from the 
gate in hilarious farewell, “now, my dear, we have 
only ourselves to think of. I will get Bridget to 
go up to the garret and help me down with the 
trunks.” 

“Fine,” said Mrs. Tolliver, “we’re off.” 

“Nearly,” said Mr. Tolliver, and went to look for 
Bridget. 


231 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


To their friends, of course, the itinerary of the 
young married couple remained a profound secret, 
but the Tollivers knew that the honeymooners were 
by easy stages wending their happy way to the big 
brick hotel down at the Hot Springs in the Virginia 
hills where so many young people have begun their 
lives together. Helen Tolliver was frequently in- 
terrupted in her packing by the arrival of telegrams 
and letters filled with expressions of her daughter’s 
complete happiness and contented conclusions as to 
married life in general, as well as the frequent reiter- 
ation of the news that Tommy was the truest and 
most devoted husband, and had proved his sterling 
worth in a thousand different ways. “The hotel bills 
may be a little high,” Alice wrote in one of her 
letters, “but the contingent fund is yet intact. Tell 
father that the ‘twenty-first reason’ is a bugaboo 
to frighten timid children.” 

And then for two days there were neither tele- 
grams nor letters. The missive so anxiously waited 
for arrived when the Tollivers were at dinner the 
night before the great day on which they were to 
start on their second honeymoon. Tolliver sat back 
in his chair while Helen read the letter carefully 
232 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


through with a face that seemed to grow not only 
more sombre but even tragic with each line. 

“Is it as bad as that?” he asked. 

“Yes,” she said, “it is as bad as that.” Then she 
dismissed the maid and in an even, expressionless 
voice read the letter aloud from its tender opening 
to its last unhappy line. 

“My Dear, Always Loving Mother: 

“I have not written you for two days because I 
could not say that all had been going well with 
us and I wanted to tell you positively when I did 
write whether your Alice was a wife or a widow. 
On Wednesday afternoon a rich young friend of 
Tommy’s, a New York man named Wallace Jones, 
loaned us his car for the afternoon and we decided to 
go to Flag Rock, which is about six or seven miles 
from our hotel. It was a beautiful limousine car and 
the road was fine, but on our way home I suppose we 
were going a little too fast down hill and we struck 
a ridge across the road which down here they call 
a ‘thank-you-ma’am.’ Tommy had his arm about 
me at the time and we both were bumped up so that 
our heads struck the top of the limousine. I had 
on my yellow straw hat with the blue flowers which 
233 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 

Tommy says looks like an inverted peach basket. 
Anyhow, it saved me, but Tommy was bare-headed as 
usual, and his head struck a rib of the limousine and 
he got what the doctors call a depressed fracture. 
There are very good doctors here who know just what 
waters you ought to take for rheumatism, but they 
said this required one of the most delicate opera- 
tions in surgery, and we telephoned to Richmond for 
a surgeon. As soon as he arrived he did what they 
call trephining and now they say Tommy is all right. 
Unfortunately, I’m afraid we will have to stay here 
for some time, as the doctors say this is fine air for 
his recovery, and that will be a question of several 
months. It was most unfortunate that he hit his 
head on the left side, for that paralyzed his right 
hand and it seems that Tommy counts out the money 
at the bank with his right hand. It is all terrible and 
I don’t know what we are to do about the expense. 
The Richmond surgeon said it wouldn’t be fair to his 
profession to charge less than a thousand dollars for 
the operation, and then there are the other doctors 
and the nurses and the hotel rooms are very dear 
for anything except a honeymoon and the colored 
bell-boys make faces at you every time you don’t 
give them a quarter for bringing you a lump of ice 
234 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


or a fresh towel, and Tommy needs so many towels 
for his poor head. Do tell us, mamma, please, w^at 
I am to do. We were so very happy before that 
Mr. Jones loaned us his car, which would have been 
all right if it had been an open car, but he couldn’t 
be held responsible because it was really not the 
fault of the car, but that awful ‘thank-you-ma’am.’ 
Write me, please, soon, mamma, what am I going to 
do about it all. 

“Your loving but miserable daughter, 

“Alice.” 

“Well, what are we to do?” said Mrs. Tolliver, 
and now that the strain of reading the letter was 
over her voice broke perceptibly and tears came into 
her pretty blue eyes. 

“Well,” said Tolliver, smiling across the table. 
“The main thing is that Tommy is all right and now 
it is up to us to come to their assistance. Alice 
evidently is not scrubbing floors as she says nothing 
about it, and in Tommy’s present condition I doubt 
if he could get a job as a policeman even if he wanted 
it. I will see ‘the boys’ to-morrow morning and ask 
them if that offer of theirs of the check for five thou- 
sand is open, and I’ve no doubt that it is.” 

235 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


“And our trip abroad,” sobbed Mrs. Tolliver. 

Bruce walked around the table and put his hands 
gently on his wife’s trembling shoulders. “That’s 
off, I’m afraid, my dear,” he said, “all off for the 
present. Perhaps twenty-five years from now we 
may have another chance. But just now I’ll go 
telegraph Alice not to worry and that you will be 
coming down there to see her by the first train you 
can catch to-morrow.” 

“You’re so good, Bruce,” Mrs. Tolliver said very 
tearfully. “Of course we couldn’t go now. It’s just 
as you said, it’s the twenty-first reason that makes 
all of the trouble, but how could any one foresee such 
a thing as this? Who could expect a thousand dol- 
lar operation and all of those other fearful expenses 
the very first week of their honeymoon !” 

“Trephining, I believe, is uncommon,” said Tol- 
liver, “but if most of the mothers and fathers all 
over the world aren’t giving up trips abroad to pay 
for trephining, most of them are giving up some- 
thing to pay their daughters’ butcher bills or house- 
rent or for something equally necessary, and at least 
to the daughters and sons-in-law quite as unex- 
pected.” 

“I suppose they are,” sobbed Mrs. Tolliver, “but 
236 


THE TWENTY-FIRST REASON 


really, Bruce, they’ve been doing it for so long that 
they seem to like it.” 

“That’s true, too,” said Tolliver, “but again they 
might like the trip abroad if they were ever let get 
farther out to sea than the docks at Hoboken.” 


237 


SIDE-TRACKED 

The New York car was at last left alone and at 
peace on a deserted siding far up the junction yard. 
Philip Hyde closed the book he had been reading, 
looked out of the window on a very high and most 
uninteresting bank of cinders, and started in search 
of his friend, James Werden. He found him sitting 
on the steps of the end platform gazing up at a 
perfect midsummer silver moon which shone resplen- 
dent from a cloudless, purple sky. 

“Get off those steps,” Hyde said, “and give me a 
chance to look about. Where are we anyhow?” 

The two young men swung themselves to the 
ground and slowly climbed up the steep, crumbling 
bank. 

“This,” explained Werden, “is the ancient village 
of Clifton Junction — Clifton Junction, Virginia — 
and the porter tells me that the northbound train 
will pick us up in something over an hour. That is, 
it will if it’s on time, and if the southbound train, 
which should get here just before it, is on time, 
238 


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both of which events he seemed to regard as ex- 
tremely remote possibilities.” 

They were standing on a broad, dusty roadway, 
which for several hundred yards ran parallel to the 
railway, and at the end of this they could see the 
lights of the station. 

Across the roadway from the tracks there was a 
dismal-looking row of little fruit stores and cheap 
restaurants, lighted by an occasional smoky oil lamp 
or a flaming kerosene torch, and one building, which 
was no less forlorn but a little larger than its des- 
titute neighbors, had a transparency hung out show- 
ing the words: “Larrabee’s Place.” 

Back of where they stood the road ran as far as 
an old covered wooden bridge, which crossed the rail- 
road tracks, and where civilization, if Clifton Junc- 
tion could be called civilization, seemed to cease 
entirely. Beyond this they could see nothing but 
the black jagged lines of endless wooded hills cut out 
against the purple sky. 

“That bridge,” said Werden, “leads to the town 
inn, which is closed. The residential quarter — at 
least so the porter assures me — lies down there back 
of the station, and the white-light district is confined 
to the barn-like structure illuminated with the oil 
239 


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lamps on our immediate right. Some nights they 
have moving pictures and vaudeville.” 

“Judging by the welcoming lights over the box- 
office window,” Hyde said, “it seems to be one of 
those nights. I suppose, as confirmed patrons of the 
drama, we really ought to go, but first I’m for a 
stroll down the main street.” 

Slowly they sauntered along the dusty road in the 
direction of the station. 

“Do you suppose,” said Werden, “that people 
really live the whole year round in a place like this ?” 

Hyde shook his head. “They do if you call 
breathing and eating and sleeping living. Besides, 
some nights they have vaudeville and moving pic- 
tures.” 

For a moment they hesitated before the door of 
the hotel, or, rather, the barroom for, with the ex- 
ception of a hallway just broad enough for the stairs 
which led to the upper part of the house, the cafe 
occupied the entire ground floor. 

“Could I proffer you a drink?” asked Hyde. 

“I don’t know,” said Werden, “we might try a 
bottle of ginger ale or something soft. It’s too warm 
for a regular drink, and anyhow I’d be afraid of the 
whiskey in a joint like this.” 

240 


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They pushed aside the swinging door and stepped 
into the big bare room. All of the windows were 
closed and the air was foul and stifling. In the 
centre there was a pool table, over which two oil 
lamps flickered and sputtered, and dripped oil on the 
faded cloth. On the right there was a bar, and on 
the wall back of it two cheap oil paintings covered 
with bedraggled mosquito net, a long shelf decorated 
with a few empty bottles, and a cracked and fly- 
specked mirror. Dirty glasses littered the top of 
the sloppy bar, the floor looked as if it had not been 
swept for months, and strips of faded wall paper 
hung from the discolored walls. 

In all ways the place seemed typical of the town. 
Instinctively, Werden and Hyde turned quickly 
toward the door, and as they did so Larrabee, the 
proprietor, slowly arose from a rocking-chair where 
he had been concealed by the far end of the bar. 
At the sound of his voice they once more turned 
back to the room. As well as they could see by the 
dim light of the oil lamps, the man looked to be at 
least seventy. He tried to hold his tall, gaunt figure 
erect, but his heavy shoulders seemed to sag from 
their own weight, his walk was little better than a 
241 


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shuffle, and the bloodshot eyes and trembling hand 
proclaimed a hard-spent life. 

“Don’t run away, gentlemen,” he grumbled ; 
“didn’t you come to buy?” Both from the manner 
of his speech and movements it was evident that the 
old man was more or less befuddled by his own liquor. 

“Of course we did,” Werden said, “but we didn’t 
see you at first — thought the place was deserted.” 

“You weren’t so far wrong at that,” Larrabee 
chuckled. “It is pretty well-nigh deserted.” He 
ran his clawlike fingers through his long, unkempt 
beard, shifted his eyes about the dirty, neglected 
room, shrugged his shoulders, and with a ragged 
towel proceeded to wipe off the far end of the bar. 

“Waiting for the New York train?” he asked. 

“Yes,” said Werden, “but I hear it’s not due for 
an hour. Could you suggest any way in which we 
could put in our time? It’s too hot to sleep in the 
car.” 

“There’s moving pictures to-night,” Larrabee said 
— “moving pictures and vaudeville.” 

Werden raised his eyebrows in polite interest. 

“And vaudeville!” he repeated. 

“Sure, a young couple — Max Mohr and Estelle 
La Rue — been here all week. Stopped at my hotel, 
242 


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but they’re taking the Eastern train to-night. 
What’ll it be, gentlemen?” 

“Two bottles of ginger ale,” Hyde said. “Are 
they good performers, this Mohr and his partner?” 

Heedless of the order, Larrabee continued to lean 
heavily on the bar and his eyes blinked at Hyde’s 
ignorance. “Didn’t you ever hear of Max Mohr 
in New York?” 

“I don’t know very many vaudeville people,” Hyde 
apologized. “What’s their act like?” 

“Songs and dances, and Max tells some comical 
stories — dress like Italians. She’s a beauty, she is — 
red-haired and wild as a colt. Beauty and the Beast 
they call themselves in the advertisements. He’s an 
ugly little runt all right, but both of them can sing. 
She’s the handsomest woman ever stopped at my 
hotel — the handsomest, I guess, I ever saw, and I’ll 
bet she was a lady once, too. You ought to hear 
them. But I’ll tell you he isn’t near so good on the 
stage as when he plays upstairs here in the parlor 
for Dolly and me. He’s got a voice like an angel. 
You’ll see my girl Dolly, too, if you go to the hall. 
She sells the tickets. What was it you allowed you’d 
drink?” 

“Ginger ale,” said Hyde. 

243 


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The old man drew his hand across his hard, 
straight mouth. “What’s the matter with regular 
liquor?” he asked. “ ’Fraid of it?” 

Hyde glanced at the half-empty bottle standing 
on the bar surrounded by dirty glasses. 

“Yes, a little,” he said, and smiled genially at the 
barkeeper. 

Larrabee winked one of his bleary eyes and with 
much difficulty disappeared under the bar. In a few 
moments he reappeared with a bottle. 

“This is my own special brand. You can always 
depend on a Virginia gentleman for two things — a 
good bottle of whiskey and a clean shooting iron.” 

From his hip pocket he pulled out a glistening 
revolver and laid it solemnly on the bar at the side 
of the whiskey bottle. 

“Now will you drink?” he threatened. His voice 
was husky and his movements were most unsteady. 

Hyde pushed the revolver across the bar. 

“Put your gun up,” he said. “I’ll drink without 
that. Besides, I don’t like professional Southerners.” 

The old man stuck the revolver back in his pocket 
9 and with his drink-inflamed eyes glowered at Hyde. 

“No offense,” he said. “You’re all right, I guess, 
but that’s more than you can say about some of 
244 


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you Yanks.” He looked up at the ceiling, winked 
significantly, and mumbled : “I know one that’ll 
stand some watching.” 

When he had served his customers, Larrabee 
poured out half a tumbler of whiskey for himself and 
tossed it off as if it had been water. It was evi- 
dently an effort to show how a Southern gentleman 
drank. The two young men said good night and 
started for the door. 

“Going to the vaudeville?” Larrabee called after 
them. 

“Sure,” said Werden. 

The old man leaned unsteadily against the bar. 
“Good,” he mumbled, “then you can tell my Dolly 
that I won’t be around to get her to-night. Tell her 
to come right home as soon as the show’s over.” 

They found her at the box office window, a blond, 
pretty, frail girl with a wonderful pink and white 
complexion, and big, round, wistful eyes, innocent as 
those of a child. She wore a simple white muslin 
dress with a bow of blue ribbon at her throat. 
About her neck there was a string of coral beads 
and in the masses of her golden hair she had placed 
a wild rose, which gave her quite an air of coquetry. 
She was a fine example of that truly feminine type 
245 


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still to be found about the piazzas of the fashionable 
summer resorts in the South, and both Werden and 
Hyde gave a little gasp of astonishment when they 
first saw her sitting in the stuffy box office. When 
Werden told her that he*r father was not to come for 
her the girl’s pale, cupid-bow lips broke into a smile 
which seemed to say that Werden’s news was not 
news at all but an old, old story. 

“Thank you,” she said in her low, sweet voice; 
“thank you, ever so much.” And then as the young 
men seemed inclined to linger before the box office 
and to continue the conversation, she added: “You’d 
better hurry right in. The performance will be over 
in a few minutes. You’ll just be in time to hear 
Mohr and La Rue do their last turn.” 

The hall was a dingy, low-ceilinged room, lighted 
by half a dozen smoking oil lamps. At the far end 
there was a narrow raised stage and before this a 
piano. Seated on the rough wooden benches there 
were perhaps twenty-five men and boys. When 
Werden and Hyde took their seats in the rear of 
the hall, Mohr and La Rue were already on the stage 
and, to the accompaniment of the tinkling, ill-tuned 
piano, were singing the Italian dialect ballad, “My 
Marietta.” 


246 


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Max Mohr was of a type once popular in the old- 
time variety halls, but now relegated to moving- 
picture, houses and summer beer-gardens. 

Like most of his kind, he had been born on Hester 
Street, had learned his dancing steps on street cor- 
ners, and his comedy methods at the Bowery and 
the Eighth Avenue burlesque houses. The boy’s 
figure — for, except in his knowledge of crime, he was 
only a boy — was slight and wiry, even graceful, but 
his face was that of the smart, knowing Polish Jew, 
born among the worst class of immigrants, and bred 
in a district of New York where law and order are 
only bywords. Unpleasant, almost repulsive, as was 
his face, there was still left a certain sweetness in his 
voice and a kind of passionate charm in the daring 
of his love-making. His confidence in his own ability 
was abnormal, even for a vaudeville performer of his 
own low type, and he seemed always to be working 
rather to amuse his partner than to interest his au- 
dience. To the people on the benches near the stage 
he paid no heed at all, but both Werden and Hyde 
noticed that while singing the most impassioned lines 
of his song he glanced to the back of the room. In- 
stinctively they turned and saw that Dolly Larrabee 
247 


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was standing in the doorway which led from the box 
office to the interior of the hall. 

Hyde gently nudged Werden. “Clifton Junction,” 
he whispered, “seems to be waking up. Do you 
remember what that old barkeeper Larrabee said 
about a Yank that would stand watching?” 

By way of reply Werden grinned cheerfully and 
in the dim light of a neighboring lamp tried to read 
the little one-sheet programme that Miss Larrabee 
had handed him with the tickets. 

“Personally,” he said, “I’m most interested in the 
lady performer with the Zaza-colored hair. Here it 
is: ‘Max Mohr and Estelle La Rue, New York’s 
favorite artists — Beauty and the Beast — in songs 
and dances.’ She’s a beauty all right, and she cer- 
tainly doesn’t belong in this kind of a place. I tell 
you there’s real distinction for you, and did you ever 
see such poise?” 

Hyde shook his head. “I can’t make it out at all. 
I’ve seen a lot of leading soubrettes in musical come- 
dies on Broadway who weren’t in her class. She 
can sing and she can dance — that is, she apparently 
could if she wanted to — and my! but isn’t she good 
to look at. There’s a reason, but it surely can’t be 
that little Polish kid.” 


248 


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To the eye of the practised theatregoer, it was 
evident at a glance that Estelle La Rue had sunk very 
far below the position to which her ability and beauty 
entitled her. Even the dress of the Italian street 
singer she wore, old and frayed as it was, had evi- 
dently once cost a great deal of money. Like her 
partner, she, too, seemed wholly indifferent to the 
provincial audience, but, unlike him, her performance 
was altogether listless and evidently but a shadow 
of what it might have been. When they had finished 
their song and the curtain fell, the small audience 
clamored loudly for more, but Mohr and La Rue 
evidently knew that it was their last turn of their 
last night in Clifton Junction and positively refused 
to appear again. There was a short series of 
comic moving pictures and then the audience got 
up, stretched itself, and wandered slowly out of the 
dingy, ill-smelling hall into the warm, moonlight 
night. The two Northerners stopped on the curb, 
just across the sidewalk in front of the box office, 
and watched Miss Larrabee take the tin money box 
from the drawer, lock it, and then put out the lamp. 
A moment later the girl came out carrying the box 
under her arm and, as she passed, nodded and smiled 
pleasantly at the two young men. 

249 


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Hyde approached her in his most deferential 
manner. 

“Couldn’t we accompany you as far as the hotel?’" 
he asked. “It seems hardly safe for you to be walk- 
ing the streets alone with all that money.” 

The girl stopped and laughingly shook the box to 
make the few quarters and dimes it contained jingle 
cheerfully. 

“No, thank you,” she said; “it’s not very heavy, 
and I’ve only got to carry it around the corner. 
Then I must come back and lock up. Good night.” 

They watched her until she had disappeared, and 
once more found themselves quite alone. The audi- 
ence had somehow melted into the shadows, and the 
little town was as silent and deserted as a graveyard 
at midnight. Werden opened his watch and closed 
it with a snap. 

“It’s a good half-hour to train time, and not an 
adventure in sight. Don’t you think as, fellow wan- 
derers from the great city we ought to call on Mr. 
Max Mohr? Also we might meet the beautiful 
Estelle La Rue. Even to say ‘How are you?’ to a 
lady who looks like that would be an adventure.” 

“I have no intention of calling on Mr. Max Mohr,” 
Hyde said with some asperity. “We are in a foreign, 
250 


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perhaps a hostile country and, anyhow, I don’t be- 
lieve in butting in where we’re not wanted. I am 
perfectly willing to go back to the hall and wait 
there for the train or until we are put out, but that’s 
as far as I’ll go.” 

“Good,” laughed Werden. “We’ll sit down and 
watch for Miss La Rue. I’d really like to see what 
she looks like off the stage.” 

And so in silence they returned to the hall, which 
was now quite deserted. All of the lamps had been 
turned out except one at the left side of the stage 
just over the piano, and the light from this was so 
meagre that the two young men had considerable 
difficulty in groping their way to a bench in the 
rear of the hall. 

“Is this your idea of an adventure?” Hyde whis- 
pered. “Personally I prefer the moonlight and fresh 
air.” 

“Wait,” said Werden, and as he spoke Mohr and 
Estelle La Rue came out of the door which led from 
the stage to the auditorium. The girl continued on 
toward the front door of the hall, but the man 
crossed the room and sat down before the piano. 

“Aren’t you coming?” she called. 

As if to show his indifference, Mohr played over 

251 


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a few chords and bummed the opening bars of “My 
Marietta.” 

“Not yet,” he called back to her. “I’ll be over 
to the hotel before the train starts. I think I’ll stay 
here now and help Dolly close up. You can do the 
packing. There’s not much of it. See you later, 
Stella.” 

The woman was standing within a few feet of 
where Hyde and Werden sat, but they were in the 
shadow of the wall, and she was unconscious of their 
presence. For a moment she stood quite motionless 
looking at Mohr; then she took a step toward him, 
but apparently changed her mind, shrugged her 
shoulders, and walked slowly from the hall. 

She had been gone but a few minutes when Dolly 
Larrabee returned. In one hand she carried a small 
valise and, apparently not wishing Mohr to see it, 
carefully hid it behind the open door. Then she 
walked down the aisle and joined him at the piano. 
By the dim light of the single bracket-lamp over 
Mohr’s head Hyde and Werden could dimly see what 
was taking place. The girl rested her elbows on the 
piano and, with her chin between her palms, looked 
steadfastly down at Mohr, who continued to half 
sing, half hum a coon lullaby, and accompany himself 
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softly on the piano. With his right hand still on 
the keys he held out his left to her, and she took it 
in both of hers and for a moment pressed it against 
her cheek. 

Back in the darkness of the rear of the hall 
Werden nudged Hyde. “It looks bad to me,” he 
whispered. 

The boy at the piano resumed his singing and 
playing. His voice grew a little louder, and he ran 
on from one song to another without interruption, 
often singing but one verse, and frequently repeat- 
ing that several times. Sometimes he sang in English 
and sometimes in Italian dialect, and again in pure 
Italian, but they were all songs of love, and Werden 
and Hyde began to understand why old Larrabee 
had said Max sang like an angel. Even the two 
young men back in the shadows of the bare, dingy 
hall were fascinated by the innate art of the Polish 
boy. At his birth God had put into him the love 
of women, and had given him a voice with which he 
could tell his love and make women love him. It was 
an accomplishment which Max Mohr had practised 
since his childhood, and better than any one else he 
knew his own power. If there had been any doubt 
in the mind of Dolly Larrabee, the Pole had evidently 
253 


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dispelled it. Werden and Hyde watched him fas- 
cinate her and draw her to him as a snake does its 
helpless prey. They watched him rise slowly from 
the piano. With a low sob the girl came to him, 
and he put his arms about her and kissed her full 
on the lips. Then he placed his hands on her 
shoulders and, holding her at arm’s length, looked 
evenly into her eyes. He spoke to her in a voice that 
was half prayer, half command, and the words rang 
out clearly and echoed through the bare, cheerless 
hall. “You will go away with me to-night?” 

Unflinching, the girl looked back into his eyes. 

“Yes,” she said, “I will go with you to-night.” 

It was just at this moment that Werden and Hyde 
heard the rustle of a woman’s dress and, looking 
about, saw the tall figure of Estelle La Rue standing 
in the open doorway. For a moment she remained 
quite motionless, her clenched hands pressed against 
her breast; and then, unseen by Mohr or the girl, 
she swung about and vanished into the night. 

Mohr had disappeared through the door leading 
to the stage, but in a few moments he returned carry- 
ing a dress-suit case. With his free hand he clasped 
Dolly by the arm, and they started hurriedly up the 
aisle. 


254 


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“This, I think,” said Werden, “is where we get 
busy.” 

To the intense surprise of the runaways, Hyde 
and Werden appeared suddenly from the blackness 
of the rear of the hall and, walking out into 1 the 
aisle, effectively blocked the way to the door. 

Mohr dropped Dolly’s arm and walked up to 
within a few feet of where they stood. 

“Well,” he asked, smiling, “who are you?” 

“It doesn’t really make much difference who we 
are,” Werden said, “except that we happen to be 
friends of Miss Larrabee’s father, and we are going 
to see that you don’t harm his daughter.” 

Max Mohr threw back his head and laughed alcud. 
“That’s funny,” he cried ; “that’s what I call funny. 
Get out of my way, you boobs.” 

It was probably the imperturbability of the two 
young men before him that suddenly made the actor 
lose his bravado and break into a storm of rage. 
He no longer laughed, and his face was livid with 
uncontrolled passion. 

“Get out of my way, I tell you,” he shouted, and 
shook his clenched fist in Werden’s face. “Get out 
of my way, or I’ll — I’ll kill you.” 

Werden looked down calmly at the little, trem- 

255 


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bling figure before him, and smiled pleasantly into 
the boy’s flashing eyes. “You’re getting excited, 
Mohr,” he said. “Let’s take it easy and talk it over. 
We’re not a couple of boobs or rubes either, that 
you’re up against. We come from the big city, too, 
although probably from a different district. I know 
you and your kind, lots of them, and I knew you’d 
get the best of a girl like this and then throw her 
away with as little feeling as you would an old shoe. 
You may be pretty good in this line of work, but 
you’re not going to get away with it this time, be- 
lieve me.” 

There was another sudden change in Mohr’s vola- 
tile manner, and his sharp, ferret-like eyes looked 
curiously into those of the two men before him. 

He drove his clenched fist into the open palm of 
his other hand, and, turning sharply on his heel, 
walked slowly down the aisle. 

The girl’s slight figure sank on a neighboring 
bench and, resting her arms on the back of it, she 
buried her head in them, and they could see her frail 
shoulders shaking with sobs. In a few moments 
Mohr came back and, going over to where Dolly sat, 
he touched her very gently on the shoulder. 

“It’s all right, little girl,” he said. “You see, it’ll 

256 


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all come right.” Then he returned once more to 
face Werden and Hyde. He was quite calm now, 
his voice low, even pleasant, and the former insolence 
of his manner had changed to that of the petitioner. 

“I’m in wrong,” he began, “I can see that. You’ve 
got me all right. But it’s just possible, you don’t 
understand. As you say, you two ain’t no rubes. 
You’re wise all right, and I guess you’re hep to me 
and my kind. But just this once you’re wrong. I’ve 
turned some dirty tricks in my time, but, say, I never 
knew a girl like this before. You understand — well, 
the others were different. Stella, now, when I first 
met her, she was way up in vaudeville, and I pulled 
her down to the moving picture game, but, Lord, 
Stella wasn ? t no Dolly. I know I was a wharf rat, 
and for years I run with the Eastman gang, and I 
done my bit — a year and eight months at Sing Sing. 
Yes, I did, but Dolly knows that, ’cause I told her 
myself. But, gentlemen, can’t a man come back? 
Just because he done time, ain’t he goin’ to ever get 
the chance to make good? I’m a lot better than 
this ten-a-day. I can get into big time if I once 
get the start, and Dolly, she’d go up with me. My 
God, aren’t you goin’ to give me half a chance?” 

“What’s the idea?” Werden asked. 

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Suddenly a wonderful change came into the boy’s 
face. His eyes fairly glistened, his whole manner 
became alert, and when he spoke again it was with 
great rapidity and eagerness. 

“It’s like this,” he ran on. “The southbound 
train gets here just before the Eastern express. 
Dolly and I are to cross the tracks and get on the 
first car of the southbound just as she is pulling out. 
They believe I’m going North, and’ll never get wise 
to our taking the other train. We’ll be in Cincinnati 
to-morrow, and then we’ll get married. I got friends 
there, and we’ll lay off for a week, and then I’m 
back to work, and good work on the big time. Do 
you’se get me?” 

From a great distance there came to those in the 
little hall the long, low whistle of the approaching 
train. 

Mohr sprang toward Werden, and tugged nerv- 
ously at his coat-sleeve. 

“That’s her,” he whispered, “that’s the south- 
bound. You’re goin’ to let us go, ain’t you?” 

He rushed over to where Dolly sat, and, shaking 
her roughly by the shoulder, clasped her by the wrist 
and dragged her back to the aisle, where Hyde and 
Werden still blocked the way. 

258 


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“Let us by, won’t you?” the boy whimpered, “we 
ain’t got no time to waste. It’s now or never with 
us” 

But the two men in the aisle did not move. 

“Why not ask her old man?” Werden said. 

“Ask old Larrabee?” Mohr shouted. “You’re 
crazy. He’d rather see her dead.” 

As he saw his chance slipping from him, the boy 
once more lost his servile, cringing ways, and, with 
his arms raised above his head, he shook his fists in 
a storm of impotent rage. His voice, now gone far 
beyond his control, had become but a series of shrill 
cries and wild, inarticulate oaths. In terror the girl 
stood trembling behind him, her hands resting on his 
shoulders. 

“Let us by,” he shouted, “damn you two — ” And 
then of a sudden his cries died away, his arms 
dropped to his side, and his eyes shifted from the 
men to the open doorway of the hall. For a moment 
there was silence among them, because all four knew 
what had happened. Through the still night air 
they heard the patter of many hurrying footsteps 
and the distant cries of the approaching mob. 

“Somebody’s told,” Mohr cried. “They’re after 
us. Now will you get out of the way?” 

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Werden stepped aside. 

“You’re too late, Mohr,” he said. “I wouldn’t 
try it if I were you. You’d better stay here and 
take a chance.” 

But the Pole grabbed Dolly by the hand, and to- 
gether they dashed through the open door. 

As the crowd caught sight of the couple it gave 
a great cry of triumph and started after them with 
redoubled speed. Their hands still clasped, Mohr 
and the girl cast one glance back at the oncoming 
crowd, and then started up the steep road toward 
the old bridge, which was the only way of escape left 
open to them. 

As Werden and Hyde came out of the hall, they 
saw the angry, yelling crowd sweep by them. At 
the end of the straggling mob they recognized old 
Larrabee stumbling along the rough road, trying to 
keep up with the others, and cursing Mohr at every 
step. At his side was Estelle La Rue, helping the 
old man on his way as best she could. The only 
woman in the crowd, she seemed to stand out quite 
apart from the others. The brilliant moonlight, 
which a moment before had bathed the whole land- 
scape, seemed now to concentrate its white rays with 
all the force of a spotlight on the tall, sinuous form 
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of the woman. The masses of red hair had broken 
loose and fell about her shoulders, and her big, shin- 
ing eyes looked neither to the left nor to the right, 
but always straight ahead at the two dark figures 
flying up the hill before her. 

“Come on, Phil,” cried Werden, “let’s see the 
finish,” and the two Northerners hurried on in the 
wake of the mob. 

Had Mohr been alone, it is possible that he might 
have made good his escape, but just at the entrance 
to the old bridge, at the very top of the hill, Dolly 
stumbled and fell to her knees. Even then escape was 
perhaps possible to the man, but he stopped and, 
bending over the girl, gently raised her to her feet. 
The leaders had come up to the runaways by now 
and, with his arms about her shoulders, Mohr looked 
calmly into the eyes of the threatening crowd. They 
stood just at the edge of the bridge, so that the 
moonlight fell full on the pale, scared face of the 
girl and the hard, ugly features of the Pole. The 
cheap bravado that he had learned among the crim- 
inal playmates of his youth had returned to him, 
and there was a smile in his black eyes, and his lips 
curled into an ugly sneer as he looked into the flushed, 
angry faces of the men about him. Perhaps it was 
261 


SIDE-TRACKED 


the pity they felt for Larrabee’s girl, whom they all 
had known since she was a child, or perhaps it was 
something in the brazen attitude of the man, but for 
one reason or another the leaderless mob remained 
silent. The stragglers had all come up by now, and 
gradually the crowd spread out and formed a com- 
plete circle, several rows deep, about the couple, thus 
cutting off all possible escape. Mohr took his arm 
from about Dolly’s shoulders and, gently pushing 
her back of him, swung slowly toward that half-circle 
of the mob standing in the sombre shadows of the 
covered bridge. The boy still stood in the white glare 
of the moonlight, but the men he faced were as well 
protected by the darkness as if they had been con- 
cealed behind a barrier. 

“Well,” he said, “what are you going to do about 
it?” 

The answer came from somewhere in the closely 
huddled mass of dark figures facing him. There was 
the sharp bark of a revolver, a blinding blaze of light, 
and the little figure of the boy in the centre of the 
group crumpled slowly up and slid through Dolly’s 
nerveless arms to the dusty road. The girl rested 
her lover’s head on her knee; with one hand she held 
his hot face closely against her breast, and with the 
262 


SIDE-TRACKED 


other she gently pressed the skirt of her white dress 
against a dark spot on his shirt. The little crowd 
about the two runaways remained quite silent and 
motionless. Her face drawn and white as the moon- 
light, the girl looked slowly about at the circle of 
dark figures before her, and then she turned back 
to her sweetheart. 

“Who was it that shot you?” she asked. “Tell 
me, won’t you, Max?” 

Mohr looked at her, smiled, and then closed his 
eyes and shook his head. 

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Honest to God, 
Dolly, I don’t know who he was. He was a stranger. 
I never seen him before.” 

Old man Larrabee pushed his way through the 
crowd and shuffled slowly out from the shadows of 
the bridge into the moonlit road. For a moment he 
looked steadfastly into the now open eyes of the 
actor. 

“I shot you,” he shouted, “you mutt, you city 
pup ! I shot you, and you know I shot you.” 

As if by way o? protest, Mohr slowly shook his 
head and once more closed his eyes. “All right,” 
he mumbled, “that’s all right. Have it your own 
way.” 


263 


SIDE-TRACKED 


Four of the men picked up the boy and started 
to carry him down the hill. Dolly walked at his 
side, holding his hand, and the crowd straggled slowly 
after them. 

Hyde looked about for Werden, but could not 
find him. In the distance he saw the train which 
was to take them North, slowly backing down the 
siding. There were but a few minutes to spare, and 
so he left the crowd and, running down the bank, 
started along the yards toward the car which he 
had left an hour before. On the rear platform he 
found Werden waiting for him. 

“Have you got a flask in your bag?” he asked. 
“The events of the evening have given me quite a 
thirst. Besides, I think it would be just as well for 
us to lock ourselves up in our stateroom until we 
get away from here. I’m not very keen about being 
called as a witness.” 

“All right,” Werden said, “our new- stateroom 
will be ready in a few minutes. The porter is making 
it up now.” 

“Our new stateroom?” Hyde asked. “What’s the 
matter with the old one?” 

“Estelle La Rue has that.” 

“Estelle who?” Hyde asked. 

264 


SIDE-TRACKED 


“Estelle Le Rue — Beauty — La Rue of Mohr and 
La Rue. I’m giving her a trip to New York.” 

There was a sudden jolting of the cars, the grat- 
ing sound of the coupling of air-brakes, and the 
train moved slowly forward. 

“Why?” asked Hyde. 

“Why?” repeated Werden. “Because she shot 
Mohr.” 

Hyde pressed his lips into a straight line, and 
looked back at the moonlit hill and the little body 
of men carrying their human burden slowly down 
the road toward the town. 

“Are you sure?” he asked. 

Werden nodded. “Quite. When Larrabee was 
telling how he did it, I stumbled on to La Rue hiding 
behind a girder with a smoking revolver in her hand. 
Then I raced her over the bridge, down the bank on 
the other side, and locked her up for the night in 
our stateroom.” 

“That’s all right for La Rue,” said Hyde, “but 
how about old Larrabee? Why did he say he did 
it?” 

Werden smiled. “That’s easy. In the first place, 
he’s a Southern gentleman — he told us so himself. 
He also knows that no jury in this State would con- 
265 


SIDE-TRACKED 


vict a father for protecting his daughter; and, be- 
sides, you forget that he thought La Rue was the 
most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Men always 
seem to be doing foolish things for beautiful women. 
Even you and I are taking a bit of a chance for one 
just now.” 

The train crawled slowly along past the dirty 
roads of now darkened shops and fruit-stands and 
“Larrabee’s Place” ; stopped for a moment at the 
station and, then, as if thoroughly tired of Clifton 
Junction, gave a snort from its engine and hurried 
on its way to the North. 


266 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” 
FOR HER 



JEANNE NORRIS threw off her dripping rain- 
coat in the hallway and came into the dimly lighted 
drawing-room tugging slowly at her wet gloves. 
Under the orange glow of a heavily shaded lamp 
in the corner, her husband was reading some im- 
portant-looking legal papers, but at the sound of the 
rustle of his wife’s dress he glanced up, nodded, and 
again turned his attention to the papers. Mrs. 
Norris crossed the room and, with her hands clasped 
behind her, stood before the broad stone hearth. For 
a few minutes, save for the ticking of the high clock 
in the corner and the crackling of the logs in the 
fireplace, there was a complete silence, and, then, 
with a sigh, half of weariness, half of irritation, 
Norris let the papers he had been reading fall to the 
floor. 

“Did your walk in the rain do you any good?” he 
asked. 

Mrs. Norris shook her head slightly and, even in 
the soft, dimmed lights of the room, her husband 


267 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


could see her pale, sensitive lips barely waver into 
a smile — a smile, however, wholly without mirth. 
“Not much good,” she said. “I should have to take 
a very, very long walk to do that, and it would 
have to be all in one direction.” 

Norris put his hands before him, palm to palm, 
and slowly joined the tips of his long, tapering 
fingers. “And what would the direction be?” he 
asked. 

His young, pretty wife looked at him, and again 
her lips broke into the same mirthless smile. “Oh, 
any old way,” she said, “so long as it led away from 
all this.” 

“From all this?” he repeated slowly. 

“Yes, from this room and this house and — 
and ” 

“Go on, please,” he said. 

“Oh, very well, I’ll go on. And you.” 

Norris’s keen, intelligent eyes wandered from the 
straight, lithe figure at the fireplace to his finger 
tips, and then to the ceiling, and then back to the 
eyes of his wife, which were now steadily fixed upon 
him. When he spoke his voice was low and not with- 
out sympathy. “I suspected, indeed I knew, that 
you haven’t been very happy of late, Jeanne, but I 
268 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


had no idea it was as bad as all that. You’re quite 
sure it isn’t the rotten weather we’ve been having 
lately, or that you aren’t feeling very fit?” 

Still looking him fairly in the eyes Mrs. Norris 
shook her head. “No, it isn’t the weather, bad as 
it is, and I never felt better in my life — never. I’m 
just tired of the whole game. I’m twenty-five and 
I’d like to be treated as if I were twenty-five, not 
as if I were a piece of furniture or the oldest living 
inhabitant and a great-grandmother of sixty chil- 
dren. Why, honestly, David, I’ve seen you look at 
a bronze or one of your old ceramics with a lot more 
affection than you have looked at me for the last 
year or so, a lot more. I suppose I’m too young or 
you’re too old. I don’t know.” 

Norris bit his thin, pale lip and once more his 
glance travelled swiftly about the room. “You knew 
the difference in our ages when I married you,” he 
said calmly enough. “Surely there was no attempt 
at deception about that, or about anything else for 
that matter. Haven’t I given you everything you 
wanted, or certainly everything you asked for?” 

“Everything,” she said, “everything that money 
could buy. Everything except the love and affection 
and the little foolish attentions that a woman craves 
269 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 

from her husband. You work downtown all day and 
you work here all evening — that is, you do when you 
don’t go to your club.” 

Norris started to speak, but, suddenly giving way 
to her increasing anger, Jeanne raised her hand to 
stop him. “I know what you’re going to say,” she 
threw at him. “You’re going to say that you have 
to work as hard as you do to buy me dresses and 
new cars and to make enough money to run this very 
beautiful and expensive home for me. Well, I could 
get along with fewer dresses and fewer cars and fewer 
servants if I had a little more attention or affection 
or whatever you choose to call it. I’m just tired of 
it all.” 

“Have you thought of a remedy?” Norris asked. 

Jeanne drew herself to her full height and folded 
her arms across her breast. “No,” she said, “there 
is no remedy. It was my own fault. I knew per- 
fectly well the man I was marrying. You had things 
and could do things for me in a worldly way that 
the other men who wanted to marry me couldn’t. 
I appreciated all that at the time, and my mother 
did, and I suppose you did, too. I was just an am- 
bitious, ill-advised little fool who got her values 
mixed. I’d always heard that love between married 
270 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


people died out in a short time, anyhow, and that 
when a girl did wake up from her rosy dreams it was 
better to find herself married to a man who could 
give her limousines than to a man who couldn’t. I 
don’t believe that now, but I did then. It’s all my 
fault. I’m blackguarding myself, not you. Nobody 
knows better than I do that I made my own bed, and 
I’m willing to go ahead and lie in it; but you must 
allow me to toss about a bit once in a while.” 

Norris smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “All 
right, Jeanne,” he said, “toss about as much as you 
like. Rut, to be quite fair, how do you know that 
you would have found this perfect love with any of 
the men who wanted to marry you? I don’t think 
you mentioned the number, did you?” 

“No, I didn’t,” Jeanne shot at him, “but I can. 
There were four; four perfectly good suitors, all 
reputable young men, and most of them what you 
and my mother, for instance, would call fairly eli- 
gible; and they were all very much in love with 
me.” 

“I suppose so,” David said a little wearily. “And 
I suppose that when you refused them they were all 
broken-hearted and their lives were ruined entirely. 
And I suppose it is equally true that they all told 
271 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


you so and said if you ever needed a friend that they 
were always at your command and would do any- 
thing in this world to serve you.” 

“They did,” Jeanne snapped; “all of them.” 

“Well,” asked her husband, “were their lives 
ruined? Has any of the four died of a broken heart, 
or, as a matter of fact, have you ever had cause to 
call on one of them to make good his promise to do 
anything you asked of him?” 

“No, you’re quite right,” Jeanne said. “That is, 
I haven’t until now.” 

Norris got up and crossed the room near to where 
his wife stood, sat on the arm of a big leather chair, 
and laced his hands over his knee. “Now, Jeanne,” 
he said, “just try to be fair. Do you believe for one 
moment that you are anything in the lives of any 
one of those four men? Do you believe that any one 
of them is still under your control in the slightest 
degree? Do you honestly think that if you were 
to call on any one of them to make a real sacrifice 
for you he would do it? Because I don’t.” 

Mrs. Norris drew her lips into a straight, hard 
line and the blood rushed to her delicate pink-and- 
white face. “I do,” she said. “I most assuredly 
do. All men aren’t like you, David. There’s a good 
272 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


deal of chivalry and romance left yet in this hard 
old world.” 

“But be reasonable, my dear,” David argued. 
“Those men must have proposed to you at least five 
years ago, and meantime they have naturally found 
other interests. I’ve no doubt most of them are 
married. That alone would prove that their lives 
were not altogether ruined, and it’s only natural to 
suppose that they have very probably passed entirely 
beyond your influence. Who were they anyhow?” 

Jeanne slowly turned her back on her husband and 
stood staring into the fire as if to find the inspira- 
tion for her next words in the dancing flames. Sud- 
denly she turned and faced him. “All right,” she 
said, “I’ll tell you who they were ; and I believe that 
every one of them would to-day do anything I wanted 
of him.” 

“Anything?” David asked. 

“Anything,” she repeated doggedly. 

“Suppose,” Norris said, “mind you, I said ‘sup- 
pose,’ you asked one of them to run away with you?” 

Jeanne smiled up at the ceiling. “That’s funny,” 
she said. “I wondered if you weren’t going to ask 
me that. Why, of course, any one of them would. 
I’m just as sure of that as I am sure that I would 
278 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


be happier with any of the four, even under those 
criminal conditions, than I am with you.” 

“Are you going to tell me who they are?” Norris 
asked, still unruffled. “I suppose I could make a 
pretty good guess.” 

“You needn’t try to guess,” Jeanne said; “I told 
you that I would tell you their names. The first 
man who ever proposed to me was Mayhew Mc- 
Cullough.” 

Norris folded his arms, smiled grimly and shook 
his head. “A. Mayhew McCullough!” he said. 
“Poor old A. Mayhew! Why, Jeanne, you know 
that he’s proposed to every debutante in town for 
the last twenty years. It’s just a habit he fell into 
when he was young. He never could break himself 
of it, and no girl was brave enough- to cure him of 
the vice by marrying him. A. Mayhew’s a bad start, 
Jeanne.” 

Jeanne herself realized that she had made an un- 
propitious beginning, and, besides that, she resented 
extremely her husband’s placid and tolerant manner. 
“Oh, Mayhew’s not so bad,” she said; “not so bad, 
believe me.” 

“Of course he’s not bad,” Norris laughed. “He’s 
not bad at all at a tea. He’s just as necessary to 
274 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


a tea as the pink candleshades, or the flowers on the 
piano, or the teapot, or the buttered toast. And as 
a cotillon leader he shows an absolute touch of 
genius ; but he does propose to every girl before she 
learns that a man who leads men in a ballroom sel- 
dom leads them in war, or downtown, or wherever the 
business district happens to be. Do you believe, 
Jeanne, that A. Mayhew would elope with any woman 
that ever lived? Why his mind doesn’t extend fur- 
ther than the four corners of an engraved wedding 
invitation, and the tint of his ushers’ ties would mean 
more to him than the honeymoon. Next!” 

Jeanne’s delicate face flushed scarlet and she fur- 
ther showed her anger in a sudden tossing of her chin 
in the general direction of her husband. “The second 
man who proposed to me,” she said, trying to be 
calm, “was ‘Ned’ English.” 

Norris screwed up his mouth and nodded his head 
in approval. “ ‘Ned’s’ an entirely different propo- 
sition — a perfectly eligible parti. Fat, good na- 
tured, easily led — that is, by his wife — and guar- 
anteed not to kick nor bite nor interfere. I think 
you should probably have married ‘Ned,’ but you 
didn’t. You made the mistake and it’s too late to 
rectify it. ‘Ned’ would be the first man to answer 
275 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


your call for help and the last one to elope with 
you.” 

“How do you know he wouldn’t elope with me?” 
Jeanne asked hotly. 

Norris swung his knee between his hands and smiled 
up at her cheerfully. “How do I know? Because 
his wife won’t let him. Who was the third lovelorn 
swain ?” 

For a moment Jeanne hesitated. “I don’t believe 
you’ll remember him — Peter Carter.” 

Norris looked up at the ceiling and crinkled his 
eyebrows as if deep in anxious thought. 

“I’m afraid you’ve got me there, my dear,” he 
said ; “I don’t remember Carter.” And then his brow 
suddenly unclouded and he fairly laughed aloud. 
“Why, of course I do. I remember Peter Carter. 
He was a particularly unsuccessful lawyer with a 
penchant for poetry and literature on the side. 
Haven’t seen or heard of him for years. Have you?” 

Jeanne nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen him once or 
twice on the street, but not to speak to. I’m afraid 
he hasn’t done very well. He looked sort of poor 
and half-starved and generally discouraged. Rather 
made a point of avoiding me. Dear old Peter! I 
think he was about the finest man I ever knew.” 

276 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


“Then if he’s as fine as all that,” David inter- 
rupted, “you may be sure he’s too fine to run away 
with another man’s wife. Who was the fourth poor 
soul whose life you ruined?” 

“ ‘Phil’ Burnham. I know you know ‘Phil.’ ” 

“Rather,” Norris said. “And he’s the last man 
in the world who would elope, even with you.” 

“Why?” 

“Why ! Because he’s the living embodiment of all 
the virtues and the standard-bearer of every tradi- 
tion known to man. ‘Phil’ follows conventions as a 
hound follows the smell of a fox. He’s a vestryman 
in the church, and a leader in any old reform move- 
ment that comes along, social and political. Why, 
‘Phil’ is the only real amateur patriot I know, and 
he’d run from scandal as a rabbit would from a boy 
with a shotgun. I’ll bet he laid out his entire career 
before he was fifteen. He’s nothing but a human 
calendar. The fact that you didn’t marry him was 
only an incident, and he promptly married his second 
choice so as to keep up to his schedule, which prob- 
ably called for a marriage at that particular time. 
Am I right? Didn’t ‘Phil’ marry Lucy very soon 
after he had proposed to you?” 

Jeanne nodded. “Yes, in about six months.” 

277 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


Norris smiled. “I thought so. Besides, ‘Phil’ 
plays bridge with me regularly every Saturday 
afternoon at the club, and a man doesn’t play 
bridge with a man one day and run away with his 
wife the next.” 

By way of answer Jeanne turned wearily toward 
the fire. “All right, David; all right,” she said; 
“you have all their names now.” 

“Well,” said Norris, “now that you’ve told me 
who they were do you still think you have any 
influence with any of them? Why, there’s not 
one of them you could now call even an intimate 
friend.” 

“No,” Jeanne admitted, “you’re quite right — not 
one of them I could now call an intimate friend. But 
do you think that that would make me lose faith in 
them? There are very few women who see much of 
their old friends after their marriage. Wives must 
of necessity put up with their husbands’ friends. 
‘Phil’ is the only one of those men you know at all 
well, and you generally see him at the club. He only 
comes here when Lucy brings him to a dinner or 
something.” 

Norris stood up and tried to lay his hand on his 
wife’s arm, but she moved away. “My, but you’re 
278 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


an obstinate child,” he said; “I dare you to put any 
one of them to the test.” 

Jeanne’s eyes flashed with injured pride and indig- 
nation. “All right,” she whispered; “I’ll dare — all 
four of them.” 

“You mean,” her husband asked, “that you would 
voluntarily dare to be humiliated by four different 
men? That you would dare to ask them to this 
house and suggest that they run away with you?” 

Mrs. Norris smiled pleasantly into her husband’s 
half-amused, half- wondering eyes. “I would,” she 
said. 

“When?” 

“Any time. Now; to-morrow.” 

“Good!” said David. “I think the lesson will do 
you a lot of good and may even bring you to your 
senses. Ask the four of them here to-morrow, mar- 
ried ones and all. And, furthermore, I’ll make you 
a sporting proposition — that is, I will on one con- 
dition.” 

Jeanne nodded. “Go on,” she said. 

“Well, if any one of them consents to elope with 
you — and remember I said ^consents,’ not necessarily 
actually elopes with you — I’ll give you ten thousand 
dollars. If you decide not to go ten thousand dollars 
279 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


will make fine pin-money for you. If you do decide 
to leave me it will give you something to start your 
new life on. You’ll need it.” 

“And the condition?” she asked. 

“That I be allowed to overhear the conversations 
between you and these men.” 

“You mean that you want to be present?” 

“Not at all. I should have to be concealed in 
some convenient place where I could hear just what 
was said.” 

Jeanne glanced at her husband with a look of ill- 
concealed contempt and shrugged her shoulders. “I 
wonder if there is another man in the world,” she 
said, “who would suggest such a thing to his wife. 
A deliberate eavesdropper, eh? Well, I’m going 
through with it just to teach you a lesson, David, 
a lesson that you will remember all of your life.” 

“Good!” said Norris. “It’s agreed then — to-mor- 
row. And, believe me, Jeanne, it’s not I who am to 
get the unforgetable lesson.” 

On the afternoon following, just as the clock 
struck four, the doorbell rang and A. Mayhew 
McCullough was shown into the Norrises’ drawing- 
room. It was some moments before the sleek and 
280 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


dapper little man of something past middle age dis- 
covered Mrs. Norris sitting in a corner of the dimly 
lighted room, and but a few feet distant from the 
heavy curtains, which separated the drawing-room 
from the dining-room. His manner, as always, was 
effusive and, with much enthusiasm, he expressed his 
gratitude for this unexpected opportunity for a cozy 
chat with his old friend. Jeanne had always been 
known for a certain fragile, flower-like beauty, of 
which her five years of married life had robbed her 
not at all, and she had seen to it that on this par- 
ticular occasion she had never looked more pretty 
nor more girlish. 

With a high-pitched, unnatural voice her visitor 
inquired eagerly after her health and that of her 
husband. “And why don’t we see you about more?” 
he added. “We miss you terribly. Why, it was only 
the other night I ” 

Jeanne pulled herself slightly forward in her chair 
and there was something in her look and manner that 
caused McCullough suddenly to cease his chatter and 
that brought a kind of mild terror to his anaemic 
heart; there was that in Jeanne’s eyes that seemed 
to portend nothing short of tragedy. Fairly certain 
of ultimate failure with this, the first of her four 
281 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


lovers, and anxious only to have the scene over, 
Jeanne deliberately hurried on to her downfall. 
“Mayhew,” she began, “because, even if I have seen 
but little of you of late, you will always be Mayhew 
to me, I am in trouble, very great trouble.” 

McCullough glanced at Jeanne’s serious eyes and, 
then, as if in search of some excuse for immediate 
flight, quickly about the room. He twisted his pearl- 
gray gloves between his well-cared-for hands, and 
uttered a startled staccato sigh. 

“You once told me,” Jeanne hurried on, “that you 
loved me; that if the time should ever come when I 
needed your help I could depend on you; that any 
wish I might make would not only be a command, 
but a blessing to you. You remember that, don’t 
you, Mayhew?” 

McCullough tried hard to say that he did, but his 
throat and lips were parched and the words he would 
have uttered ended in a sort of a clicking sound. 
Jeanne continued with breathless haste: “Now the 
time has come when I must ask you to make good 
that promise. I’m not happy, Mayhew. I want to 
get away.” 

“Get away?” he stammered. 

“Yes, get away; get away from all this.” Her 

282 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


eyes swept the room and returned to gaze stead- 
fastly into those of the now terrified McCullough. 
“I must leave this home and David. I want to begin 
life over again and with the man I should have mar- 
ried years ago. Will you take me away with you, 
Mayhew?” 

The very awfulness of the situation seemed to 
arouse McCullough to a certain mental activity, and, 
at least in part, to restore his power of speech. “My 
position,” he began, “is most difficult. A few days 
ago, even last Sunday, I was free to do anything 
you asked.” 

Jeanne’s pretty, cupid-bow lips curled into a 
smile of disdain. “Then I am to understand that 
your love for me has died since last Sunday?” 

“Not at all,” McCullough stammered, “but last 
Monday I got engaged.” 

Jeanne turned a withering glance on her visitor 
and said simply, “Oh !” but the one word was fraught 
with a world of cynicism. 

“Not exactly engaged,” the poor little man hur- 
ried on. “I only proposed. It was at the Boltons’ 
dinner Monday night, and after dinner I proposed 
to Elsie Bolton.” 

“It must have been a particularly good dinner,” 

283 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


Jeanne answered with intolerable scorn. “If I re- 
member correctly Elsie is the very small, very black 
Bolton girl with the slight mustache on her upper 
lip,” 

With a few, quick, automatic nods McCullough 
admitted the truth of Jeanne’s description. “She’s 
a debutante,” he said; “Elsie’s only eighteen.” His 
tone was apologetic, and his words were evidently 
intended to give the impression that youth was Elsie’s 
only fault, and that, no doubt, she would eventually 
outgrow her present lack of good looks. 

“And she accepted your proposal, of course?” 
Jeanne asked with a great show of mock gracious- 
ness. 

McCullough drew a long breath and shook his 
head. “Not exactly,” he admitted. “She’s to let 
me know definitely to-morrow night at the Bayards’ 
dance for the debutantes.” 

Jeanne slowly got up from her chair and, draw- 
ing herself to her full height, slightly inclined her 
head in the direction of her guest, who, at this first 
sign that the interview was over, fairly sprang to his 
feet. 

“And while awaiting your answer from Miss 
Bolton,” Jeanne said in icy tones, “you would 
284 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


prefer not to embark on any other affair of the 
heart ?” 

McCullough timidly stretched out his hand and, 
with frightened eyes, glanced into the hard, uncom- 
promising eyes of his hostess. “That’s it,” he 
mumbled. “It wouldn’t be exactly fair to Elsie, 
would it?” 

Jeanne did not deign to take the outstretched hand 
nor to answer the question, but, as if to show the 
interview was definitely at an end, once more she 
slightly inclined her head, this time in the general 
direction of the door. 

Only too happy to be free, the dapper little man 
somehow, half stumbling, half running, made an 
absurd exit from the room, and Jeanne dropped 
back into her chair. 

As the sound of the closing of the front door 
reached the drawing-room Norris appeared between 
the curtains which led to the dining-room. He was 
smiling genially and just about to light a cigar. 

“Don’t smoke,” she commanded. “They’d smell 
the smoke.” 

“All right, my dear,” David said, and blew out the 
lighted match. “Who comes next?” 

“ ‘Ned’ English. I asked him at four-thirty.” 

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THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


“Fine,” David laughed, “and, if I remember the 
rest of the programme correctly, Peter Carter is to 
be here at five, and ‘Phil’ at half-past five.” Still 
smiling, Norris looked down at his wife. “Really, 
Jeanne,” he said, “haven’t you had enough? I’ll 
give you the ten thousand and let’s call it off.” 

But Jeanne only tightened her lips and shook her 
head. “No, David,” she said, “I’m going through 
with it now. There are three more of them left; 
you’ll get your lesson yet.” 

Just as Norris was about to answer her the electric 
bell of the front door rang again, and, with a nod, 
David disappeared between the curtains. 

English came into the room, smiling and cheerful, 
and with both hands stretched out toward Jeanne, 
just as he had gone through life, smiling and cheer- 
ful, and with both hands stretched out to all the 
world. 

“Hullo, Jeanne!” he said. “Haven’t seen you for 
an age. So glad you rang me up. What’s the row?” 
Still holding her hands he looked into her troubled 
eyes. “Why, Jeanne, dear,” he said, “what is it? 
Don’t tell me that you’re really in trouble — you of 
all people. Why, you poor, dear kid, tell me all 
about it.” 


286 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


The very heartiness and sincerity of his kindness 
made Jeanne more nervous than she had been before 
his coming, and she hurried on with her carefully 
prepared speech. “Five years ago,” she began, “you 
promised to come to me whenever I sent for you.” 

“Well, Jeanne,” English laughed, “here I am.” 

“You promised,” she went on, “that you would do 
anything for me that a man could do for a woman.” 

“Did I?” her guest said, screwing up his mouth. 
“All right; I’ll take your word for it. I certainly 
would do a lot for you. What is it you want me to 
do, anyhow?” 

“I’ve had trouble with David. I’m going to leave 
him. I want to go to some country where I will never 
see him again and where I can be happy. I’m sorry 
that the idea had to come from me, but I want you 
to go with me. Will you go ?” 

English wrinkled his forehead and looked at her as 
if he were not at all sure of her sanity. “What do 
you mean?” he gasped. “Elope; run away?” 

Jeanne nodded. “Yes, elope; run away.” 

Her one-time admirer put out his hand and laid 
it gently on her shoulder. “I certainly will not run 
away with you,” he said. “You don’t know what 
you’re saying, Jeanne. You don’t want a change of 
287 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


husbands. You want a change of doctors. Sit down 
a minute. Let’s talk it over calmly.” 

Jeanne sat down facing the fire. “What’s the 
use of talking it over calmly?” she said, her anger 
thoroughly aroused. “Why don’t you refuse at 
once and let’s have it over? It’s not a matter to talk 
over calmly. If you cared for me, if you wanted to 
be true to your promise, you wouldn’t want to talk 
it over.” 

“May I smoke?” English asked, quite unruffled. 

Jeanne shrugged her shoulders. “If you want to,” 
she said. “It’s so like a man to want to smoke at a 
time like this. Suppose you had asked me to run 
away with you and I had stopped to powder my 
nose?” 

English chuckled, lighted a cigar and took his 
stand before the hearth, and, as he did so, Jeanne 
was sure she heard a match struck just behind the 
portieres where her husband was sitting. 

“The trouble is, my dear Jeanne,” he began, “that 
your scheme doesn’t work out right — never has, 
never will. I’m sorry you’re not happy with ‘Dave.’ 
I know he’s a bit dry and a rather cold proposition, 
but really he’s a pretty fair husband as husbands go 
nowadays. But even if he were worse, a whole lot 
288 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


worse, there’s no happiness in this running away with 
some other woman’s husband. I suppose you’d like 
to sail away to some land of orange sunshine and 
turquoise skies and have a villa perched on a hill 
covered with groves of olive trees. Well, there are 
just such places, and there’s lots of people have tried 
them under exactly the conditions you are suggesting 
now. You can find any number of them scattered 
all along the Riviera; nice little cottages, each with 
a husband living with some other man’s wife. At 
least there were the last time I was over there, and 
I’m quite sure that they’re there yet and will be for 
years to come; there’s no other place for them to 
go. Sometimes they take a little trip to Paris, or 
Florence, or Venice, and, then, when they’ve met a 
few of their old friends who quite properly give them 
a good snub, they sneak back to the little cottage, 
which in their hearts they loathe. It’s not a pretty 
life.” 

Jeanne stared into the fire and shook her head. 
“You men forget so quickly,” she said. “You con- 
jure up any old picture to suit your argument and 
your convenience. I have known women who could 
be happy with the men they love anywhere, any 
place, any time, always.” 


289 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 

English shook his head, “No, Jeanne,” he said, 
“you’re wrong ; not under those conditions. Conven- 
tion is probably at fault, but it’s quite inexorable. 
It may be a fixed game, but if you break the rules 
you’re thrown out. There are a lot of things a 
woman can do that are forgiven and forgotten, and 
there are more that a man can do; but there are 
certain things that are never forgotten nor forgiven. 
For instance, a man can’t cheat at cards, and a man 
or a woman can’t run away with another man’s wife 
or another wife’s husband, as the case may be, and 
hope to get away with it. It’s one of those things 
that sticks to you all your life, and when you die it 
goes on living after you, to curse your children. I 
tell you, Jeanne, love under those conditions don’t 
last. The mere fact that they’ve cut themselves off 
from the rest of the world is bound to make a man 
and a woman hate each other. They’re prisoners, 
prisoners for life; and the worst of it is that they 
have imposed their own sentence — a few days, or 
weeks, or perhaps months of happiness, and then an 
endless stretch of years of exile, outcasts, just exist- 
ing together, friendless, childless. They devote the 
best part of their lives to getting back, but did you 
ever know the case of a woman who got back? I 
290 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


never did. No, Jeanne, it does not work out. Try 
the more respectable method of going back to visit 
your mother for a while, and if that won’t do, and 
you find you don’t want to go back to your husband, 
get a divorce or a separation. But don’t try to beat 
out tradition, because it never lost a fight yet.” He 
tossed his cigar into the fire. “Good-by, Jeanne,” 
he said, “and don’t be foolish. Think it over, and 
the next time we meet we’ll have a good laugh over 
it.” He pulled out his watch, glanced at it and 
shoved it back into his pocket. “It’s very late ! I’ve 
got to be getting back to the Missus and the kids. 
Give my regards to ‘Dave,’ won’t you?” 

Jeanne got up and held out her hand. “No,” 
she said smiling, “I won’t promise to do that. Good- 
by. You used to be a very amusing person, 
Ned, but I fear married life has dulled your sense of 
humor. Don’t get too soggy and prosaic, will you? 
And just try to remember that there are other things 
in the world besides toasted slippers and a dressing- 
gown.” 

“I promise.” English laughed and shook her hand 
warmly. He crossed the room, but at the doorway 
turned back to her. “Thank you, Jeanne, for the 
compliment you’ve paid me anyhow. I appreciate 
291 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


it greatly. I’m only sorry I can’t tell my wife. I 
haven’t been able to make her jealous for years.” 

“That’s all right,” Jeanne said, “but the next time 
a girl asks you to elope just stay away from her. 
It’s a poor time for sermons and I don’t think you’re 
a very good preacher. Good-by.” 

Once more she turned toward the dining-room and 
saw the curtains opened just far enough to give her 
a momentary glance at the face of her husband, a 
glimpse sufficient to show that his face wore a grin 
of satisfaction and of triumph. 

As the clock in the drawing-room chimed out the 
hour of five, Peter Carter, the third of her former 
suitors, was ushered into Jeanne’s presence. He 
was a tall, spare young man, with prematurely gray 
hair, and his white, bloodless face was heavy with 
shadows and deep lines. Even in the dim light 
Jeanne could see that his clothes were of another day 
and much worn, and that his linen, although clean, 
was badly frayed. The old, young man bowed low 
over her proffered hand, and, then, for some mo- 
ments, stood looking into her pretty eyes. 

“Five years,” he said. “That’s a long time with 
some of us, but I think — indeed, I know — that you 
are younger and prettier than ever. You won’t 
292 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


mind me saying that, because, you see, I have grown 
into an old man while you are still only a girl.” 

Jeanne went back to her chair before the hearth 
and the visitor sat on the far side of a table, a few 
feet distant. 

“I have not seen you, Mrs. Norris,” he went on, 
“for five years, and after that time you send for me. 
When I got your message I hoped, impossible as it 
may seem, that I might be of some slight service to 
you.” He glanced across the table at her and smiled 
a boyish, friendly smile, but it was quite lost on 
Jeanne as she was still staring into the fire. “Do 
you remember — ?” he went on. “But then of course 
you wouldn’t. Why should you?” 

Jeanne glanced up and saw that her visitor was 
blushing and regarding her with much confusion. 

“Go on,” she said, “please.” 

“I was going to ask you,” Carter continued, “if 
you have forgotten a promise I made you. It was 
just after I had asked you to marry me, and — and 
when you had refused I said that if I could ever be 
of service to you I would come to you from any 
distance. And you — you see, you were very young 
then — took my hand and asked me to make that 
promise, and I made the promise. I remember that 
293 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


so well because — well, because it was the last time 
that we ever met. You don’t remember, do you?” 

“Yes,” Jeanne whispered, “I remember. It was 
because of that promise that I sent for you.” 

Carter bowed his head. “I wish,” he said, “I only 
wish you knew how grateful, how very grateful I 
am. But, Mrs. Norris, to be quite frank, I know of 
no one so poor who could or would turn to me.” 

“I’m so sorry, Peter,” she said. “You mean that 
things have not gone very well with you?” 

Carter glanced across the table at the sympathetic, 
pretty eyes, and his thin, pale lips broke into the 
semblance of a smile. “No,” he said, “I haven’t 
been very successful. I haven’t been successful at 
all. Since I failed to win you the word ‘success’ has 
had no place in my career. Only the other day I 
came across some verses I wrote years ago about a 
youth, whom I compared to a battleship steaming out 
on life’s seas to fight the world, and I’m afraid I 
always rather pictured myself as the youth.” Carter 
turned his eyes from Jeanne and stared into the fire- 
place. “A battleship !” he went on. “Why, I’m no 
better than a derelict. A police-court lawyer and 
a hack writer for the ‘movies’ and the dime-novel 
publishers.” 


294 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


He got up and stood before the hearth and clasped 
his hands behind his back. And, then, after a few 
moments of silence, he suddenly seemed to pull him- 
self together and he threw back his narrow shoulders. 

“Forgive me,” he went on, “I didn’t come here to 
tell you about my troubles, but just to see you 
again. Your voice made me remember the old days 
and the difference. Please tell me about yourself; 
you surely have no troubles. Such a wonderful 
home, and it seems as if I were always reading about 
your husband’s success and his celebrated cases.” 

Jeanne nodded. “Yes, that is all very true. David 
has had a wonderful success, and the house, I sup- 
pose, is everything any woman could desire for a 
home. But, Peter, I’m not happy. That’s what I 
asked you here to tell you. I’m not happy — not 
happy at all, Peter.” 

Carter looked at her and smiled incredulously. 
“Not happy?” he repeated. “Just what do you 
mean?” 

Jeanne got up from her place before the fire and, 
walking over to where he stood, held out both her 
hands toward him, and Peter took them in his and 
held them tightly. 

“Go on,” he said and his tense voice scarcely rose 

295 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


above a whisper. At last victory seemed within her 
grasp and Jeanne hurried on to her triumph and to 
her husband’s downfall. 

“I’m tired,” she said, “oh, so tired, Peter; tired 
of my home and tired of him. You, yourself, have 
reminded me of your promise. I asked you here to 
make good that promise. I want you to take me 
away.” 

Carter held her hands close and gazed steadily 
into her big, innocent eyes. “Take you away?” he 
said. 

“Yes, Peter,” she whispered, “that’s it; take me 
away anywhere — anywhere away from here, any- 
where where we would be always together. You are 
the only man I have ever loved. I didn’t know that 
five years ago, but I know it now. And it’s not too 
late, is it, Peter? Don’t say it’s too late, please !” 

Carter suddenly dropped her hands and clasped 
his own tightly behind his back. “Yes, Jeanne,” he 
said. “I’m sorry, but it’s too late — just five years 
too late.” 

“But your promise?” she begged. 

“My promise! If I break my promise to you I 
break faith with but one woman. If I keep my 
promise I break faith with myself — with forty years 
296 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


of upright living. I break faith with society, and 
law and order, and everything that stands for de- 
cency and high living and honor. I am poor enough, 
God only knows ; poor in everything except my 
ideals, but I am still rich in them. The standard- 
bearer may fall, but the drummer boy or the water 
carrier or the camp follower in rags may carry on 
the colors. It makes no difference; the colors are 
still the colors.” 

With lowered head, she put out her hand. 
“Good-by, Peter,” she said. “I know what you 
mean. I understand; you were always like that; 
good-by.” 

Carter bowed low over the girl’s outstretched 
hand, so low that his lips brushed the tips of her 
fingers. “Good-by,” he whispered. “I shall always 
remember you.” 

As Peter Carter went out of the front door Philip 
Burnham entered it. He came into the drawing- 
room, smiling, cheerful, wonderfully good-looking, 
and greeted Jeanne as if he had left her only a few 
hours before. 

“It’s good to see you again, Jeanne,” he said. 
“It’s fine!” He moved quickly toward her and held 
out his arms as if he were about to embrace her. 

297 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


Jeanne, rather terrified by the ardor of his wooing, 
backed away from him. “Philip,” she said quickly, 
“do you know that this is the first time you have 
been in my home for months?” 

“I do,” Philip said crisply, “and for a very good 
reason.” 

“And the reason is?” 

“Because you are the only woman I ever truly 
loved.” 

Jeanne sank slowly into her favorite chair before 
the fireplace, and Burnham stood a few feet away, 
staring steadily into her confused eyes. 

“Why, Philip!” she said; “why do you say a 
thing like that to me? That’s just the way you 
used to talk to me and to look at me before I mar- 
ried David. Are you really never going to grow 
up ?” 

“I’ve grown up all right,” Burnham replied, 
laughing. “There’s a great difference between 
growing up and outgrowing your love for a 
woman.” 

“But, Philip,” Jeanne insisted, a little terrified, 
“you’ve got no right to rush in here and make 
whirlwind love to me like that. I’m a married woman 
now, and David says you are the very acme of all 
298 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


that is respectable, and that you’re quite devoted to 
your wife and children.” 

“I’m sure I’m indebted to David for the good char- 
acter he has given me,” Philip said dryly, “and I’ve 
no doubt all he says is true. It certainly is true 
about my wife and children, but what’s that got to 
do with my love for you? Men and women are 
supposed to marry the men and women they really 
love, but very often they don’t. Surely you know 
that. When i couldn’t marry you I married Lucy, 
because I liked her and because I believed that it is 
better to marry a second choice than not to marry 
at all. I didn’t love Lucy the way I loved you any 
more than you loved David the way I loved you and 
still love you. Are you tired of him yet?” 

“I am, very . But how did you guess?” 

Philip shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, I don’t know. 
It always seemed as if it had to happen, and, then, 
after five long years, when you sent me that mysteri- 
ous message, to come to you at once, I guessed some- 
thing was up. Instinct, I suppose. What are you 
going to do about it?” 

“Leave him,” Jeanne said. “What else is there 
for me to do?” 

“Good!” said Burnham. “You’re just in time. 

299 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 

Men like ‘Dave,’ who think of nothing but money 
and give up their lives to work, are bound to snap 
all of a sudden. A year or two more with him and 
you’ll be wearing a nurse’s uniform and devoting 
your life to measuring out teaspoonfuls of medicine 
and counting pulse beats.” 

Jeanne glanced up at the strong, eager face of her 
visitor. “Don’t you think that’s rather unusual 
advice from a law-abiding citizen and a model hus- 
band and father?” 

“No,” said Burnham, “not when I’m giving it to 
you. Why, Jeanne, what else could possibly count 
against my love for you? It’s just you, you, you; 
that’s all there is to my life — you.” 

Jeanne looked squarely into Philip’s eyes. “Do 
you mean that you still love me?” 

“I do,” Philip said. “I love you more than any 
man ever loved any woman. That has been said 
frequently before, but not by a man who has gone 
on loving a woman for five years after her marriage 
to another man; and, although I have seldom seen 
you during those five years, I have loved you more 
and more every minute of them. When you leave 
David, where are you going?” 

“I don’t know,” Jeanne said ; “that’s why I 

300 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


wanted to see you. I was in trouble, and it was 
natural, after all, wasn’t it, that I should turn to 
my oldest friend — the man who was once my best 
friend? Will you take me away with you, Philip?” 

“I will,” said Philip. 

“When?” 

“Now.” 

“How about your wife and your children and the 
splendid position you have made for yourself?” 

“I love you,” Philip said. 

“You know,” Jeanne went on, her victory over 
her husband now assured, “that to run away with 
me must mean your finish, your everlasting dis- 
grace. And you mustn’t forget that you are known 
as a friend of my husband. That is not liable to 
help you in the eyes of the world.” 

“I forget nothing,” Burnham said passionately. 
“Jeanne, I tell you I love you and that nothing else 
counts. Will you go away with me now? Give me 
just one hour and I can stand all the disgrace and 
hardship that can come to any man for the rest of 
his life.” 

“All right, ‘Phil,’ ” she said. “Will you wait for 
me here? I’ll be ready to go in a few minutes.” 

Jeanne started to leave the room, but, as she did 
301 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


so, she heard the honk-honk of an automobile which 
evidently had stopped before the house, and then, 
almost immediately, the buzz of the electric bell of 
the front door sounded. 

Burnham darted toward the window, and, drawing 
aside the curtains, looked out on the street. With 
a half-articulate cry, followed by a muttered oath, 
he pulled the curtains sharply together again. 
“Heavens, Jeanne,” he whispered, “it’s my wife!” 

Jeanne stood as silent, and white and motionless 
as a marble statue. 

“What’ll we do?” Burnham demanded. “You 
must hide me. Be quick, Jeanne!” 

But, instead of making an effort to hide her ap- 
parently now terrified lover, Jeanne only succeeded 
in uttering a few stifled sobs and backing slowly 
toward the dining-room door. “I won’t!” she suc- 
ceeded in gasping at last. “I won’t hide you !” 

“Good!” cried Philip; “then we’ll stand together 
and tell her all.” 

He moved quickly toward Jeanne who, now, almost 
helpless from fright, had just enough strength left 
to turn and half run, half stumble, toward the dining- 
room curtains. 

Just as she reached them young Mrs. Burnham, 
302 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 


smiling and radiant, entered the doorway leading 
from the front hall. If, in the dim light of the draw- 
ing-room, she was at all conscious of Jeanne’s tragic 
face she certainly did not show it in her manner. 

“Hullo, Jeanne!” she said. “How are you, Philip? 
All ready for the trip?” 

“What trip?” Jeanne gasped. 

“What trip?” Mrs. Burnham echoed. “Why, our 
trip, or rather your trip to Florida. Don’t tell me 
David didn’t tell you about it. We start in an 
hour.” 

Before Jeanne could answer she felt her husband’s 
arm placed gently about her shoulders. “No,” he 
said, “I didn’t tell her. I wanted it to be a surprise ; 
so I only told her maid. She’ll have everything 
ready on time.” 

Jeanne looked up into her husband’s kindly eyes. 
“Just what do you mean?” she asked. 

“Well,” David said, “after our chat yesterday 
afternoon, when you seemed so depressed and tired 
of things in town, I had a long talk with ‘Phil’ at the 
club and we arranged for his visit this afternoon to 
brighten you up a bit, as it were, and then for Lucy 
to join us all here later. Now I’m going to forget 
business and we’re going to have dinner right away, 
303 


THE MEN WHO WOULD “DIE” FOR HER 

and after dinner we four start for Palm Beach, and 
a month of orange sunshine, and palm trees and 
purple skies. How about it?” 

For answer Jeanne put her arm through David’s, 
and, with wrinkled brow, looked up at him with 
tearful, smiling eyes. 


304 


HER MAN 


GRETTA ST. JOHN let herself into the flat, and 
promptly stumbled over the hat-rack which pro- 
jected itself far across the dark hallway. 

“Darn those set-pieces,” she swore softly to her- 
self, and then cautiously groped her way down the 
narrow passage. 

Once in her own bedroom, she lit the single gas 
jet, tossed her sailor hat and her handsomely 
initialed but empty reticule on the bed, tousled her 
pretty yellow curls before the mirror, and smiled 
with pleasure and no small degree of satisfaction at 
the pretty face in the looking-glass. Her cheeks 
were ruddy and her big, blue eyes glistened after her 
long walk from the theatre through a series of May 
showers; and, as a matter of fact, Gretta had am- 
ple cause to smile at the reflection of the delicate, 
piquant beauty of her face and of her slender, sup- 
ple, little figure. She sat on the edge of the bed 
and took off her russet shoes, dark and soggy from 
305 


HER MAN 


the rain and the mud of the streets, and then care- 
fully felt the soles of her feet. 

When she discovered that her brown cotton stock- 
ings were quite dry, there was just a shade of dis- 
appointment in her face, and she glanced tentatively 
at a pair of patent leather pumps at the end of the 
bed. For a moment she hesitated and then mumbled, 
“Why not?” Quickly she went over to the bureau, 
opened the lower drawer and took out a pair of 
neatly folded black silk stockings. 

“Why not?” she once more argued aloud as she 
returned to her seat on the edge of the bed and 
started to replace the cotton stockings with the 
transparent black silk ones. “Why not, indeed!” 
Gretta ran on. “It’s always safer to change your 
stockings, anyhow, and then these are so very much 
prettier, and, sad to say, Gretta, it isn’t every day 
that you have a ‘swell’ come to tea. As a matter 
of fact, you never had a real swell come to tea 
before !” 

At last the silk stockings and the patent leather 
pumps had been placed where they would appear to 
the greatest possible advantage, and Gretta, singing 
as she went, hurried down the hallway to Mrs. Jessie 
King’s sitting-room. Mrs. King was in the kitchen, 
306 


HER MAN 


just beyond, and, so, through the half-closed door, 
Gretta called her greetings to her, and then looked 
about the little sitting-room at the preparations 
which Jessie had made for the tea-party. There was 
a small bunch of jonquils in the vase on the piano and 
a branch of apple blossom stuck behind “Scene at the 
Death-bed of President Garfield,” and just a spray 
over the framed copy of Kipling’s “Vampire.” The 
brown plush cover with its appliqued scarlet roses 
that usually adorned the centre-table had been re- 
placed by a white cloth which fairly shone and 
crinkled from its newness. On the table were the tea- 
things and a chocolate cake, and a large plate for 
the biscuit that Jessie King had prepared herself, 
and which she was to bake after the arrival of the 
distinguished guest. There were no lengths to which 
Jessie would not go to oblige a favorite roomer, and 
she loved Gretta St. John almost as if she had been 
her own daughter. 

“It looks fine,” Gretta called. “The cake’s a 
wonder and the room is that clean and nice. It’s 
beautiful, Jessie.” 

Gretta was quite sincere in her gratitude, but she 
did not really think that this hot, stuffy room was 
beautiful. She had always instinctively abhorred 
307 


HER MAN 


Jessie King’s beloved collection of preposterous, 
grinning billikins as she had always hated the 
flowered piano cover, the stiff walnut furniture with 
its plush covering, and as she had come to hate every 
one of the innumerable photographs of Eugene 
Errolle with which the walls were entirely draped and 
which stared out at oneffrom every nook and cranny 
of the sitting-room. There were pictures of Errolle 
in a morning suit, in his evening clothes, in the drab 
clothes of Hamlet, in the hose and leather doublet 
of the swashbuckler, D’Artagnan , in the flowing 
locks and graceful mantle of Orlando — old photo- 
graphs these, taken years ago when Errolle was the 
justly popular leading man of a Louisville stock 
company. There were other pictures of him less 
faded and yellowed by age, taken after his hair had 
begun to turn gray and his face had grown heavy, 
after his shoulders sagged just a little and the slim 
waist and the piercing look of the black eyes had 
become but treasured memories. These last photo- 
graphs were of the days when he played charac- 
ter parts with Melbourne’s Repertoire Company 
through the Middle West. The days when he first 
met, and wooed and won Jessie King, who was play- 
ing the ingenue roles in the same company. 

308 


HER MAN 


On this particular afternoon, as Mrs. King came 
into the sitting-room carrying a highly burnished, 
silver-plated sugar-bowl and cream pitcher, no one 
would have imagined that ten years before she had 
played ingenues and had played them well, and 
looked them well, too. Now her figure was amply 
rounded, even plump, and her bust seemed to fill her 
freshly ironed shirt-waist to overflowing, and her 
hips to strain the hooks and eyes of her short cloth 
skirt to the bursting point. But there was still much 
beauty in the blue, placid eyes, in the soft brown 
hair parted over the clear, broad forehead, in the 
pink and white oval cheeks and the small, sensitive, 
baby-like mouth. Not a suggestion of a crow’s foot, 
nor a wrinkle, nor a shadow was there to mar the 
pretty, always smiling, shining round face. Jessie 
King carried her troubles in her big, loving heart, 
far removed from the sight of man and woman. The 
best friend she had ever had never learned the 
tragedy of her life either in her eyes or from her 
lips. But if Jessie King was brave, she was also pos- 
sessed of a great hope and an infinite faith. Every 
night she let her stout, unwieldy body drop to her 
stiffened knees and asked that the good Lord would 
* send her husband back to her, and every night, after 
309 


HER MAN 


her prayers were over, with a smile on her pretty 
lips, she went to sleep, secure in the belief that on the 
morrow her prayers would be answered. 

Jessie set the sugar-bowl and the cream pitcher 
on the table with much precision, and, with her 
hands resting on her broad hips, regarded the gen- 
eral effect with a face fairly beaming with pride and 
satisfaction. 

“Gretta dear,” she said, “I think it looks fine — 
good enough for any swell. Now, I’ll put that dish 
for the biscuits in the oven and we’re ready for him.” 
She turned and looked at Gretta with a smile brim- 
ful and overflowing with love. 

“I like you to have your gentlemen friends come 
here for a cup of tea,” she went on. “It’s so much 
nicer than meeting them at restaurants. You know 
what I mean — just having me dodge in if it’s only 
for a moment shows ’em you’re sort of looked after 
and protected, and that you’ve got a home.” 

Gretta walked around the table and dropping to 
her knees, rested her hands on Mrs. King’s broad 
shoulders. 

“You dear, sweet, old thing,” she said. “You 
bet it’s good to have a home, and such a pretty 
home, too.” 


310 


HER MAN 


The door-bell rang shrilly and Mrs. King hurried 
into the kitchen. Gretta opened the front door for 
Mr. William Chauncey, a most amusing young man, 
one of New York’s predatory rich, who divided his 
hours of leisure between jeunes-filles dances and 
chorus-girl suppers and was equally popular at 
both. 

“Charming,” exclaimed Chauncey as he glanced 
at the tea-table and then at the overcrowded little 
room, “perfectly charming — so cozy and interest- 
ing.” He smiled at Gretta, but almost at once his 
glance strayed back to the gallery of photographs 
and rested on a large picture of Errolle as Claude 
Melnotte . It stood on the upright piano nearby and 
bore the actor’s autograph written in a large, bold 
hand. 

“Pardon me, won’t you, Miss St. John,” Chaun- 
cey apologized, “but I have never seen so many 
photographs of one person in all my life. Who is 
Eugene Errolle?” 

Gretta shook her head and nodded toward the 
kitchen door. “Not now,” she said, “I’ll tell you 
some other time.” 

“I beg your pardon,” Chauncey whispered, “for- 
give me, won’t you?” 


311 


HER MAN 


Gretta smiled her forgiveness, and then she and 
her good-looking young visitor sat down on opposite 
sides of the tea-table and, for a few minutes, talked 
of the last supper party at which they had met, and 
exchanged the latest gossip concerning their mutual 
friends of the stage. 

“And now,” Gretta announced, “I’m going to 
introduce you to my friend and protector, Mrs. 
King. Also, she has baked some hot biscuits for you 
and you must eat them, and admire them inordi- 
nately. Do you understand?” 

“Perfectly,” said young Chauncey, “inordinate- 
ly.” 

Mrs. King was led from the kitchen, her round, 
shiny face wreathed in smiles and blushes. In one 
hand she held the plate of biscuits and the other she 
stretched out in welcome toward the visitor. She 
took her place at the table and Gretta helped her 
to a cup of tea. For a moment conversation seemed 
to lag, and, then, Chauncey, recognizing his responsi- 
bility, started in to do his best. 

“I’ve just been telling Miss St. John,” he began, 
“how fortunate she is to have so charming a home, 
and now that I’ve met her hostess I find that she is 
doubly fortunate.” 


312 


HER MAN 


Jessie King blushed a brilliant scarlet. “It is 
nice,” she said; “at least, we think so. I’ve been a 
long time getting it just right.” 

“So many interesting things you’ve collected,” 
Chauncey suggested. 

“That’s right,” Mrs. King admitted, “especially 
if you’re interested in stage people. I suppose 
you’ve noticed my photographs?” 

Chauncey nodded gravely. “Yes,” he said, “you 
have some very fine ones of Mr. Eugene Errolle.” 

Whatever thoughts or doubts may have existed in 
her heart and in her mind, Jessie King smiled bravely 
and looked at her guest, her big blue eyes shining 
with a marvellous joy and pride. 

“Eugene Errolle,” she said, “is a great actor, and 
he’s my man 

Chauncey hesitated, groping about for something 
to say. But once having seen the light in the* 
woman’s eyes and heard her speak those two words, 
“my man,” which held all the meaning of a won- 
derful caress, he found that any phrase of which 
he could think seemed hopelessly weak and wholly 
inadequate to the situation. And, so, in the presence 
of so big a thing as this woman’s love, he remained 
313 


HER MAN 


silent and acknowledged her words with a low bow 
which told her that he understood. 

A few minutes later Mrs. King excused herself, 
and as they heard the door close behind her, Gretta 
settled back in her chair and nodded her assent to 
Chauncey’s request to light a cigarette. 

“Eugene Errolle,” she began, “was a good stock 
actor of the old, heroic school, and when Jessie met 
him he was playing character parts in the same 
repertoire company in which she was the ingenue. 
That was about ten years ago and I suppose that 
she was thirty and he was forty-five or thereabouts. 
Anyhow, she fell in love with him and married him, 
and for the rest of the season they were apparently 
perfectly happy. Ideally happy, she says. And, 
then, one night, just before the season closed, he left 
her. They had both signed for the next season with 
the same troupe, and the outlook was apparently 
just as good and bright as it could be.” 

“He didn’t leave any word,” Chauncey asked, 
“nothing at all?” 

“He left a note saying that he had unknowingly 
wronged her and that she must try to forgive and 
then forget him.” 

“Anti then?” Chauncey said. 

314 * 


HER MAN 


“Well, she forgave him all right.” (Gretta 
glanced about the room at the gallery of photo- 
graphs.) “But you can see for yourself how hard 
she has tried to forget him. This place is a regular 
shrine to Eugene Errolle.” 

“Why does she call herself King,” asked the young 
man, “if she’s so proud of Errolle?” 

“King was her name before her marriage and she 
always used it on the stage. After he quit her she 
kept it on in the hope of getting a job. Then she 
got too stout to be an ingenue, and came on here, 
and took to keeping roomers and getting a home 
ready for Errolle when he wanted to come back.” 

For a few moments there was silence while 
Chauncey puffed away on his second cigarette. “But 
what I can’t understand,” he said going back to 
Jessie’s story, “is how a fairly well-known actor 
could lose himself so completely, that is, if he stayed 
on the stage.” 

“He lost himself for nine whole years,” Gretta 
said, “and then about a year ago Jessie read in The 
Mirror that he was playing lead in a melodrama in 
some one-night stand in Nebraska. Ever since then 
she buys The Mirror every week, as soon as it comes 
out, and reads about how he played at Painted Post 
315 


HER MAN 


or Oil Centre and that business was good and Eugene 
Errolle fine. He must have gotten his second wind, 
somehow, for he certainly gets corking notices — that 
is, from those water-tank towns that he plays.” 

“And she never tried to see him?” Chauncey 
asked. 

Gretta shook her head. “Nope. It seems he asked 
her in the note he left never to write to him nor try 
to see him again.” 

“And she’s always done as he asked?” 

“As if it were a command from Heaven.” 

“What a brute,” Chauncey said, “I’d like to kick 
him just once myself.” 

“Sometimes, I feel that way, too,” said Gretta, 
“and then again I don’t know that I do. I’ve heard 
people say who knew them when they were together 
that they were both absolutely happy and crazy in 
love with each other. He sends her money, too, and 
that’s in his favor. That is,” Gretta went on, 
“somebody sends her money. It comes in cash and 
is always mailed from New York, so I suppose he 
sends it through a friend here. Jessie couldn’t live 
as she does if it wasn’t for that and she spends pretty 
much everything she gets in fixing up the place so 
it’ll look nice when he comes back to her.” 

316 


HER MAN 


Chauncey got up and looked about for his hat 
and coat. 

“Her man,” he said smiling. 

It was on the Sunday following that Jessie King 
showed Gretta a paragraph in The Morning Tele- 
graph announcing the appearance of the favorite 
Western actor, Eugene Errolle, in a society drama 
to be produced the next night at a Broadway 
theatre. It was a new play by an unknown author, 
and could only have found an opening in New York 
at this particular season when most of the theatres 
were closed for lack of good attractions. After 
Jessie had pointed out the notice to Gretta, she sat 
down in a rocking chair and rocked slowly back and 
forth, and, with wide-open eyes, looked dully into 
space. 

“Well, Jessie,” Gretta said when she had read the 
paragraph, ‘are you going to the theatre to-morrow 
night or any night?” 

Jessie nodded. “Yes,” she said with a little catch 
in her voice. “You see, he didn’t say anything in 
that letter that would mean I shouldn’t see him act. 
You’re not working now, Gretta — don’t you think 
you could go with me? We’d sit well back where he 
317 


HER MAN 


couldn’t see us. I wouldn’t like to go alone, some- 
how. It’s been so long, dearie, ten years — ten long 
years.” 

Gretta knelt at Jessie’s feet and put her arms 
about the older woman’s waist. “Why yes,” she 
said, “of course I’ll go. I want to go.” 

Monday night was very hot and close and the two 
women, dressed in their best shirt-waists and short 
cloth skirts, started early to walk to the theatre. 
Mrs. King bought two seats far back in the or- 
chestra, and then they went into the hot, stuffy 
theatre and waited in silence for what seemed to 
Gretta the longest half-hour that she had ever 
known. 

“I don’t think I can stand it,” Jessie whispered. 
“I shouldn’t have come. I was a fool to come.” 

But Gretta soothed her as well as she could, and 
then the orchestra began the overture, and Jessie 
seemed to pull herself together, and, sitting up very 
straight in her chair, gazed with dry, searching eyes 
at the curtain, waiting for the moment that she had 
looked forward to for ten long years. 

The part of John Eberly , which Errolle was to 
play, was that of a successful business man, the hus- 
band of a young wife. That Jessie and Gretta knew 
318 


HER MAN 


from the programme and the opening lines of the 
play, but there was no indication to show how old he 
was supposed to be. For ten minutes the play ran 
its course and then a speech of one of the minor char- 
acters announced the entrance of John Eberly . He 
came on the stage, smiling, with his hands out- 
stretched toward his young and pretty wife. The 
actor was good to look upon, graceful, and easy, 
and very young. His likeness to Jessie’s husband 
was altogether striking. Even Gretta could see that, 
but he was not the Eugene Errolle whom Jessie had 
married. Gretta felt the big, strong body of the 
woman next her suddenly relax, and she put out 
her hand and clasped Jessie’s hand closely in her 
own. 

“That’s not Errolle,” Gretta whispered, “they’ve 
put on an understudy.” She glanced quickly at 
Jessie and found that the older woman’s eyes had 
become suddenly dimmed but were staring with a 
look of wonder and a sort of fascination at the young 
man on the stage. 

“No, Gretta,” she said, “that’s not an understudy. 
That’s Eugene’s son.” 

The same thought had come to Gretta, but she 
would not admit it even to herself. 

319 


HER MAN 


“Errolle had no son,” Gretta whispered. “You 
know he had no son.” 

The older woman closed her eyes as if to shut out 
the glaring lights and the sight of the man on the 
stage. “No, my dear,” she said very gently, “that’s 
Eugene’s boy. I can see the father in his face. I 
can see it in his walk. I tell you I can see it in his 
eyes. God, how I wish I hadn’t come !” 

Gretta turned back to the stage, and, even from 
the photographs, she knew that Jessie was right. 
When the first act was over, the two women instinc- 
tively and without a word got up and went slowly 
out. They followed the hot, thirsty crowd of men 
from the theatre down Broadway until they came to 
the first cross-street. This they found dark and 
deserted, and they turned the corner and half way 
up the block stopped in the shadow of a high office 
building. Jessie pressed her chubby hands hard 
against her temples and closed her eyes. 

“That was an awful jolt I got,” she mumbled. 
“I’m sorry to spoil your evening, Gretta, but I guess 
I’d better go home.” 

Gretta put her arm under that of the older 
woman and started to lead her toward Broad- 
way. 


320 


HER MAN 


“I think you’re right,” she said. “You’d much 
better go back to the flat and lie down.” 

“I don’t want to lie down,” Jessie protested. “I 
want to think — think and figure out what it all 
means. It’s the first time in ten years, that I’ve felt 
real discouraged — the first time. You go back to 
the show, dearie, and I’ll go home alone. I want to 
be alone for a while, if you don’t mind. I’d rather 
try to work it out alone — it’s easier that way some- 
times.” 

Gretta protested, but Jessie insisted that it was 
her wish. 

“Go back to the show, dear,” she said, with a 
feeble effort to smile, “go back and see it out, and 
when it’s over hurry up to the flat and tell me all 
about — about Eugene’s son and if he made a hit. 
Good God, how much he looks like his father — and 
his voice was just the same — just exactly the same. 
Run along, dearie — but hurry back when it’s over.” 

Gretta watched the broad, ungainly figure mov- 
ing slowly away from her, pushing her way through 
the sweltering crowds that filled the sidewalks. 

“That’s a pretty sad home-coming,” she said lo 
herself, “pretty sad. If I could only help — if I 
only could.” 


321 


HER MAN 


When she reached the theatre again the curtain 
was just going up on the second act, and, with the 
exception of one man, the lobby was deserted. In- 
stinctively she knew that he was the manager of the 
company, and, going straight up to him, she excused 
herself for speaking to him, and at once started in on 
the matter in hand. 

“This Eugene Errolle who is playing the lead,” 
she asked, “had a father by the same name, hadn’t 
he? Was in the business, too, wasn’t he?” 

By her words as well as by her dress and manner 
the manager knew that Gretta was in one way or 
another connected with the stage, so he smiled at her 
graciously and screwed his cigar slowly from the left 
to the right side of his mouth. 

“That’s right,” he said. “The old man sort of 
went to the bad and left his name to the son. Old 
man Errolle goes by the name of Walter Scanned 
now.” 

“Do you know where he is?” Gretta asked with 
great eagerness. 

“I do,” the manager laughed, “but I’m afraid 
you want to sue him for breach of promise or 
something.” 

“Don’t guy,” Gretta begged, “please don’t guy. 

322 


HER MAN 


Tell me where he is. Please tell me — that is, if you 
know.” 

“It’s a hard luck story, kid,” he said, “sure a hard 
luck story. He’s the property man of the same 
troupe his son is featured in — practically starred 
in.” 

Gretta’s eyes flared up with excitement and she 
plucked nervously at the manager’s sleeve. 

“You mean he is the property man with this 
show?” 

“Sure. Eugene got him the job. He’s the prop- 
erty man and Eugene’s dresser on the side. That’s 
what he is — his own son’s valet. Sort of tough, 
eh, little one, for a regular fellow who was once a 
matinee idol, and played Armande and Orlando — 
pretty tough, eh?” 

Gretta looked up at the manager and nodded. 

“That’s right,” she said, “you bet it’s pretty 
tough. Show business is a hard game, any way you 
play it. Good-night, and much obliged.” 

She walked from the lobby into the street. It 
was very hot and the crowd jostled her and con- 
fused her and she wanted so hard to be alone and 
to think. Somehow it seemed as if fate had put it 
into her young hands to repay all that Jessie King 
323 


HER MAN 


had done for her. “If I only could,” she repeated 
over and over again, “if I only could.” 

But however great her desire to help the woman 
who had been as a mother to her, she knew that 
her task was not an easy one, and that one false 
step now might prove fatal to Jessie’s happiness. 
She turned up the first side street, and, free from 
the crowd, walked slowly up and down, her head 
bowed and her hands clasped tightly behind her. At 
last the thoughts that crowded and confused her 
excited brain seemed to straighten out and her mind 
was clear again. The simplest plan was the best 
plan, after all. The decision once made, she turned 
back toward the theatre. With dimmed, misty eyes 
she looked on at the remainder of the play. She 
saw the people on the stage and heard them speak- 
ing, but she was quite unconscious of what they said. 
She heard the people about her in the audience whis- 
pering to one another during the play, and chatting 
aloud between the acts, and, at other times, she heard 
them applaud, but her mind was filled with thoughts 
of Jessie — her dear Jessie sitting alone in the flat, 
her last hope gone, and, then, of the property-man 
behind the scenes of whom she had heard so much, 
but never seen. 


324 


HER MAN 


When the curtain had fallen on the last act, she 
went slowly out and took up her stand at the stage 
door. One by one, or in little groups, she watched 
the actors come out and hurry away with friends, 
all of them smiling and laughing over the success of 
the play. At last, when she had begun to fear that 
she had not recognized Jessie’s husband, that he had 
gone away, and that her quest had failed, she saw 
him come out of the door, and, for a moment, hesitate 
as if uncertain which way he should turn. To Gretta, 
he looked many, many years older than he did in the 
photographs. His hair was quite white, his shoul- 
ders stooped, the former virile, athletic figure was 
now almost gaunt and the spirit had gone out of his 
eyes entirely. Gretta approached him timidly and 
looked up into the drawn, gray face. 

“Isn’t your name Eugene Errolle?” she asked. 

He looked at her and shook his head. 

“Mr. Errolle,” he said, “I think must have gone 
by this time. I’m sorry.” 

But Gretta stood stolidly before him and looked 
squarely into the tired, motionless eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” she explained, “awfully sorry, and 
I don’t want to be rude, indeed, I don’t, but weren’t 
you once known as Eugene Errolle?” 

325 


HER MAN 


“Yes,” he said quite simply, “but that was a long 
time ago. Why do you ask?” 

“I come from a friend,” Gretta said. 

“A friend,” he repeated. “I’m afraid there must 
be some mistake. I have no friends.” 

“Yes,” Gretta said, “one friend — a very old 
friend, who loves you better than her own life — 
Jessie.” 

“Jessie,” he repeated, and, turning his eyes from 
Gretta, looked up at the deep purple sky set with 
its myriads of steadfast, crystal stars. 

“I want to take you to her,” Gretta urged, “now, 
right away. Please let me take you to her.” 

He turned his eyes back to Gretta, and, under 
heavy, gray brows, blinked at her uncertainly. 

“Better come home,” she whispered. “She’s been 
waiting a long time.” 

“I could go home now?” he queried. “Are you 
sure she wants me?” 

Gretta put out her hand and taking his gently 
in her own started to lead him slowly away from 
the stage door. 

“Wants you?” she said. “She’s never had a 
thought except of you since the day you left her.” 
326 


HER MAN 


He looked at her, and, by his eyes, Gretta could see 
that his mind was confused and stunned. 

“I can tell you about that,” he said. “I mean 
about leaving her.” 

“Not me,” Gretta laughed. “But you can tell 
her” 

In almost complete silence, they walked slowly to 
Jessie’s home, and, when Gretta had opened the door 
to the flat, she led him down the hallway to the sit- 
ting-room. Jessie was sitting at the table, her head 
buried in her arms. 

“Jessie,” Gretta whispered, and, before the older 
woman could raise her head, the girl tiptoed out of 
the room and closed the door behind her. 

When J essie saw him she gave a low cry, and, run- 
ning to him, put her head on his shoulder and sobbed 
out the happiness that overflowed from her big, child- 
like heart. After a time he led her gently to a chair 
and begged her to be seated. It was the first word 
that either of them had spoken. 

He stood before the empty hearth with his hands 
clasped behind his back, and leaned against the man- 
tel-shelf which was adorned with many photographs 
of Eugene Errolle when the actor was more a 
327 


HER MAN 


woman’s ideal of a man and much less a human 
wreck. 

“Jessie,” he began, “I must first tell you some- 
thing.” 

“About your son?” she interrupted him, and her 
round, tear-stained face blazed scarlet. 

“Yes,” he said, “and about her . The day I left 
you, you may remember, I went for a walk and late 
in the afternoon I dropped in at a theatre. It was 
one of those cheap burlesque houses. They gave me 
a seat in a box, almost on the stage. The first thing 
I saw was a young man, not much more than a boy 
— but he was so like what I had been when I was 
young that I wanted to cry out. And then his 
mother came on the stage, and I understood. I had 
married her almost twenty years before. We were 
very unhappy and she left me a few months after 
our marriage. I had never heard that she had a son, 
and several years after we separated I understood 
that she had died. Then I met you and married you, 
and wronged you as much as any man can wrong a 
woman. As soon as she saw me, I knew that our 
days, I mean your days and my days, of happiness 
were over. She sent word by the manager to meet 
her after the show. I went back on the stage and 
328 


HER MAN 


found her and the boy waiting for me. She had 
grown old, and was terribly painted, and she had 
sunk very low on the stage and off of it, and the 
boy, as I soon learned, was following in her foot- 
steps. She told me that she was tired of fighting 
alone and that the time had come when she was going 
to claim her rights. I could have divorced her easily, 
but, after all, you must understand, Jessie, that she 
was my wife, and the mother of my son.” 

Jessie, who was following Errolle’s words with 
dry, wide-open eyes, nodded her assent. 

“And then?” she asked. 

“Then I went with her. I changed my name, and, 
a year later, when I had got my boy a position in 
a decent company, I gave my name to him. So far 
as my work went I sunk to her level and worse. For 
years I played in cheap, rotten burlesque shows. 
The only satisfaction I had was when I made enough 
money to send you something. For the last ten 
years I have lived in a kind of hell. There was no 
love between us, my position was gone, the work I 
was forced to do was an insult against decency, and 
I could no longer hold up my head or look honest 
men and honest women in the face. The only hap- 
piness I knew was to send you the little money I 
329 


HER MAN 


could save from my wages, and, from a great dis- 
tance, watch my son succeed in his profession and 
bring back the name of Eugene Errolle to the place 
it once held. That’s about all. It isn’t a pretty 
story. Just a month ago, before my boy started 
East for his first real chance, his mother died, and 
I joined him. They took me on as property-man 
and I dress my son Eugene. He didn’t want me to 
work because he loves me, but I liked it better — to be 
making my own living.” 

Errolle pressed his hand over his eyes as if to 
shut out the memory of those last ten years. Then 
his arm dropped impotently to his side and he looked 
at the woman at the table and tried to force a smile 
to his white, drawn lips. 

“Well, Jessie,” he said, “I guess that’s about all 
— that’s just how it was. I’m glad that kid looked 
me up and brought me here so that I could tell you 
myself. I wanted to see you just once and to tell 
you. I didn’t think you’d want to see me, but she 
said you did. She said you’d been waiting.” 

He shuffled away from the fireplace, and looked 
about the room for his hat, and, then, his glance fell 
on the gallery of portraits of Eugene Errolle — the 
Eugene Errolle who had died ten years before. He 
380 


HER MAN 


looked back at Jessie, but on account of the mist in 
his tired eyes he couldn’t see her very distinctly. 
And his dry, hard lips refused to utter the words he 
wanted so much to speak. 

“You’re not going already, are you?” she 
asked. 

His answer scarcely rose above a whisper. 

“Yes, Jessie, I must be going now. Good-bye to 
you and bless you.” He stretched two trembling 
hands toward her. 

“Why, Gene,” she said, “I thought perhaps you’d 
come to stay, now — now that you’re free.” 

She glanced about the overcrowded room, with 
its gilt wall-paper, and plush furniture and painted 
banjos. “I’ve been keeping the home waiting for 
you for such a long time.” 

Errolle had picked up his hat and stood twisting 
it slowly between his hands. Suddenly he looked up 
at Jessie, and, in her sweet, eager eyes saw the light 
of a kind of love that he had not known for many 
years. 

“Do you mean,” he stammered, “that after all I’ve 
done, that after you’ve seen the wreck I’ve come to 
be, that you still want me? That you’ll marry me, 
Jessie, and start again?” 


331 


HER MAN 


It was half an hour later when Gretta, who in 
bed but still very wide-awake lay staring into the 
darkness of her little room, heard Jessie lead Errolle 
down the hallway and let him out of the flat. She 
heard the front door close, and, then, Jessie’s foot- 
steps returning as far as her own door. 

“Come in, Jessie,” she called. 

The older woman came in, her heavy body dropped 
slowly to the side of the bed, and putting her arms 
about Gretta she drew her closely to her breast. 

“I wanted to thank you,” she said, “and Him for 
bringing back my man to me.” 


332 





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